


Baby, Pull Me (Closer)

by KayMoon24



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ashe Is A Precious Sweet Bean, Back Pain, Bathing/Washing, Complete, Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Felix Has Trust Issues, Felix just really likes Annette's neck okay, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Grief/Mourning, I'm Not Kidding But I Am Ashamed At The Sweetness, Light BDSM, Massage, Mentions of Glenn Fraldarius, Mentions of Rodrigue Fraldarius, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Sleep Deprivation, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Burn, cathartic af, chapter 2 now includes Dimitri/Mercedes, chapter 2 will have the good porn, chapter 3 is here and it physically hurts my soul, chapter 3 now includes Ashe/Ingrid, fam this fic now has fanart, missing support chains between the emotionally-damaged boy squad, platonic male friendships deserve love and time too, seriously soft, soft, soft felix, thegoodporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-09-07 18:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20314261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayMoon24/pseuds/KayMoon24
Summary: Felix Fraldarius felt fragile in her arms. He looked fragile. Annette would give anything to make this moment last forever.Alternate summary:  Felix didn't mean to make it his damn job to take care of the falling apart "Boar Prince", but it seemed to fall to him anyways. But then Ashe wants to help, and then Annette is there, looking pissed at him, and from there, it all falls apart.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: yo fam I’m waist deep 200+ hours of hard mode/classic mode FE: Three Houses and boi you know this came pouring tf out
> 
> Also hi, I’m Kay, first time FE writer, nice to meet your eyeballs 
> 
> Anyway, here’s what you’re in for: 
> 
> summary: Felix Fraldarius felt fragile in her arms. He looked fragile. Annette would give anything to make this moment last forever.
> 
> Super Light sub/dom undertones (probs more in part 2, oh my)
> 
> Alternate Summary: Felix didn't mean to make it his damn job to take care of the falling apart "Boar Prince", but it seemed to fall to him anyways. But then Ashe wants to help, and then Annette is there, looking pissed at him, and from there, it all falls apart.
> 
> If ya just want the felix/annette stuff, flip to page 13. Otherwise, please enjoy the slow burn ride  
: )

* * *

  
  
_ Felix Fraldarius felt fragile in her arms. He looked fragile. Annette would give anything to make this moment last forever. _

* * *

  
  
It began the way most of the more miserable days of Felix’s life usually went: someone talking about his brother, Glenn.  
  
Except it wasn’t just anyone talking about his brother; it_ had_ to be the mad prince himself.  
  
It had to be _Dimitri._  
  
Dimitri. Standing alone alongside the fallen walls of the dias, staring into the remaining shards of light splintering through from the outside world. Dimitri, looking as if he had always looked this way to Felix; nothing more than a stolen vessel in the shape of a human. Hardly there, hardly speaking. Most never approached Dimitri when he was in a bad way. And he was_ in a bad way,_ and everyone knew it, even if Felix was the one who had taken it upon himself to collect Dimitri and deposit him back into his quarters to do something, anything else, rather than stand there a minute more, talking to himself. And sweet Saint Cethleann help him, if _one_ more person said Dimitri was praying, Felix was going to scream himself hoarse. Praying? _Praying?_ Were the devout here ignorant or just stupid? No, Dimitri couldn’t be praying, no matter how the nuns whispered or the monks gossiped that Dimitri stood, often for hours within the belly of the church, as if he had found salvation.  
  
No. Felix knew exactly what Dimitri had found.  
  
It was what he always found near the end of the day.  
  
Ghosts.  
  
He looked like a ghost himself, honestly. Felix stood just a little ways away, contemplating when he would make his move. He had noticed Dimitri’s smell more than anything lately—and not for the better. The ‘dead’ prince of Faerghus was still clad in his battle armor, unwashed and too tight over his shoulders, breastplate, and calves. His greatcoat was dirty and frayed. His hair clinging to his sunken cheeks. His throat and face, now dusted in wheat-thin facial stubble, unbecoming to how Dimitri had once cared for himself. Or, to be more precise, how Dedue had once cared for him, the great knight’s missing presence as obvious as an open wound if Dimitri’s rapid descent into an unwashed, uncared for, unsleeping miscreant had to do with it all. And it wasn’t as if no one else didn’t try, per say, as much as it was just...unspoken...that most anyone, particularly the women, not be alone with Dimitri.  
  
Medeces, for example, always met with Dimitri here in the dias. She actually reached out to touch him, often. A stroke down his arm, a brief holding of his fingers inside of her own hands, a squeeze, and then, gone. She had offered only once to perhaps help wash Dimitri’s hair, but she wanted it on Dimitri’s terms. Medeces was a sweet girl but an overly hopeful one. Dimitri rarely used words anymore, let alone to tell someone that he wished to have his hair washed. It was just endless, endless grime, punctured only by wayward tears that Felix reluctantly wiped from his face, when Dimitri was too lost inside of himself to react at all.  
  
Slowly, under his breath, Felix sighed. Dedue. Was he truly dead? Just another ghost for Dimitri to converse with, huh?  
  
Why did this become his job lately?  
  
He slowly gazed about the pew but he met no one else’s eyes willingly. To the south wall, a nun collected Felix’s attention and gave a single nod. The flock was leaving for the evening, and she wanted Dimitri to be out of her way for cleaning. That was fine by Felix’s standard. He had spent the majority of the day purging the field of the remaining thieves and, sadly, he had little energy for another large task, like being asked to help clean.  
  
He hadn’t noticed until now, as he took his first steps towards Dimitri, but his own body ached. Slow and building. He rolled his right shoulder, then attempted his left only to drop the motion instantly. The muscles slithered tightly, a little ball nestled deep into his back. No matter how he pawed at his own back, he couldn’t reach the knot, and it only seemed like each attempt made it worse.

Again, Felix sighed.  
  
He didn’t want to fight Dimitri again. Not tonight.  
  
Because it wasn’t to say that Dimitri didn’t react. It was all just a matter of mood and day. And today, Felix had a certain feeling that there would be more pain to follow.  
  
“Dimitri.” Felix said coolly. It was more showing the prince he was unarmed as much as it was a greeting. “It’s getting late.”  
  
Dimitri’s head snapped in Felix’s direction and, for a strange moment, Dimitri turned paler. His mouth dropped open. His tongue now exposed in a stricken, terrible way. It, too, was an unhealthy white. A gloved hand grabbed at his own chest as if his heart had skipped a painful beat.  
  
“Glenn? I don’t…”  
  
Ah, this again. Felix resisted rolling his eyes as he had in his childhood. He wasn’t terribly good at shaking his childish rudeness, such as making a horrible bitter show whenever his father accidently called Felix by his dead brother’s name. Felix was a grown man now, a man at war, and a man that knew his bluntness was both a sword and shield. It never helped to not be straightforward with Dimitri now. It was the closest effort to gentleness Felix could give.  
  
“No, I'm still just Felix. He’s been dead a long time, Dimitri. You’ve always been stuck with me.”  
  
Another awkward moment for Dimitri to collect himself. “Felix...I see. Sorry.”  
  
“You’re not.” Felix tried not to shrug indifferently. That would hurt too much to express. “Come on.”  
  
“Where...are we going?” Dimitri, for once, was actually trailing along after him. With his cape drooping along the flooring Felix couldn’t help but imagine something weaker, something usually hunted and dowey and chick-like instinctively following from behind. “I…” Dimitri trailed off. Felix didn’t care what he had to say. Dimitri rarely finished one thought before the other, particularly once this exhausted.  
  
“Your bed chambers. To sleep.” Felix added, glancing back to make sure his words didn’t scare Dimitri off.  
  
Dimitri blinked back at him heavily, as if considering his other options. Again, it was pathetic and Felix felt his heart twist, just a bit, to think this was honestly what had become of the prince. When he had said years before...about cages and death and hunting the boar prince down…Felix turned away.  
  
He never thought before he spoke and, in doing so, he never quite knew the full extent of what he meant.  
  
The walk to Dimitri’s room felt longer than usual. Felix opened the door with a quick movement, too well practiced, and then waited for Dimitri to enter before him. Once again, miracle after miracle, Dimitri did.   
  
Now came the real test. If Felix could actually get Dimitri to lie down. A new war all itself. Being practical and direct here never really helped, either. It didn’t matter to Dimitri that he would be a burden on the battlefield if he was too muddle minded to think clearly. He wanted to die. He didn’t care that he had friends that worried and a kingdom that was waiting for him. The dead needed him more. Or so he murmured to himself in the low dark with Felix usually the only one around to hear the full extent of the insane detail to Dimitri’s plan.  
  
And it was insane.  
  
And it was incomprehensible, words running together and losing a touch of reality.  
  
And it was...sad.  
  
It was really sad.  
  
Once here, Felix hardly did much else. Sometimes he’d change the sheets over but lately he had given up even on that. What was the point of giving someone so dirty a clean place to sleep? If Dimitri didn’t care, neither did Felix.  
  
He pulled the quilt down, a dense, woolly thing, and pushed two pillows back into place. His shoulder twinged again, almost as if warning. Felix ignored it. He turned back to Dimitri to begin the first losing round. He wasn’t a great negotiator. He cleared his throat.  
  
“Alright. It’s over now. Lie down.” His voice felt thin. He knew he sounded impatient. But Dimitri wasn’t the only one fighting a war. “You gonna use this bed or not?”  
  
Standing blankly on the rug of the room, Dimitri gave a single shake of his head.  
  
Felix moved from the side of the bed to grab a chair. He scooted it shortly near Dimitri. “Then sit down. I don’t care how you sleep just so long as you do.”  
  
Dimitri didn’t bother to look at him. Or thank him. Or be anything remotely human.  
  
“It’s cold in here.” was all Dimitri finally whispered.  
  
Dimitri’s good eye stared into the wall of his bedroom with a grave intensity.  
  
“Yeah, well, I’m not making you a fire.” There would be no way. For all he knew, Dimitri would burn himself alive in it to keep warm, or worse, try to burn the church down, hurt someone he loved deep down. Plus, Felix wasn’t going to be swinging an axe for firewood today. He was pretty certain he couldn’t even if he tried. “Just sit down, alright? Don’t your legs hurt from standing all day?”  
  
And then, without thinking, Felix did a very stupid thing.  
  
He touched Dimitri.  
  
He had reached a single hand to place on Dimtri’s padded shoulder, to him pushed down onto the chair and, all at once, Felix found himself doubled over in pain, his lower back and right hip bone digging excruciatingly into a hard surface without give. In the darkness of the room, Dimitri had absolutely thrown Felix against a dresser, and forced him to endure it, crushing his ribs and back. There wasn’t even time for Felix to make a sound of pain or surprise.  
  
Then, without warning, Dimitri stopped. He pulled away to stand as far as he could from Felix, much like the wild animal Felix thought him to be, scared and panicked and dangerous. This was exactly why Felix didn’t want anyone alone with Dimitri, particularly the girls, good intentioned as they were. It just wasn’t safe. Even the weaker of the men, like Ashe or Ignatz, made Felix feel anxious. A riptide of heady adrenaline flooded Felix’s system. It left him dizzy, like a watery shock, soon dulled by pain and at how his mistake had earned him a brand new bruise.  
  
There was a very thin line between what Dimitri often subconsciously did and what Dimitri did with intention. With the pain in his hip radiating into a spiral that caused Felix to sag against the oak of the dresser, he thought it very, _ very _ intentional.  
  
“Sleep, you fool.” Felix hissed at Dimitri’s towering form. Felix kept his hands stupidly behind himself, clenched tight to the handle of the dresser, squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter, pretending it to be Dimitri’s neck. His mind flashed to think of a way to defend himself, a way beyond fists, but his shoulder twinged and he swallowed against the sound of pain that crawled up his neck. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”  
  
Dimitri stared at Felix for a long, long time. Felix refused to back down, his dark eyes fixed tightly back to Dimtri’s face. It took time but in the shadows Felix carefully noticed the pale sweat along the prince’s brow, the dirty tendrils of his blond hair twisted both into knots at his face as well as tangled in the eyepatch. Dimitri was a walking, horrible mess, and there was very little Felix could do to change that. A single blue eye stared back at Felix. It appeared dull, red, and if forced to blink, could barely open again.  
  
“The bed. It’s behind you.” Felix continued. “Go to sleep.”  
  
Talking to Dimitri was useless. He hardly ever responded to talk besides war plans. Giving orders to Dimitri was even more so. On the battlefield he only reluctantly minded the professor, and still, it was with a heavy, resentful glare. Here, in the prince’s bedroom? It sounded out right pathetic, commanding his mad prince to go to sleep like some wayway hound and not with the careful language of someone more comforting, more human. Someone that could never be Felix. And Felix did not want to be that person. He was honestly giving a lot more than he could ever let on: to be a watchful eye for a mad, bleating boar was not easy on his own heart. It was far easier, as it always was, to pretend to care less than he did. That way it did not hurt when Dimitri mistook him for his dead brother, often like his father did when not minding Felix, or when he overheard Dimitri’s quiet, desperate pleas for death beside those spirits that haunted him.  
  
It seemed that Dimitri learned too late to harden his heart against the remaining world. Dimitri had long been a slumbering monster, thirsty for blood and bone, but here, gently swaying on his feet, drunk from exhaustion and time and hate, Felix found it hard to pick up the spear of his words to call him a beast now.  
  
For now, Dimitri was just a sick man haunted by ghosts. Ghosts and nightmares.  
  
Felix moved from his place at the dresser towards the door. He glanced back at Dimitri, expecting the man to be still struggling there, squinting into the dark, but he was surprised to see that Dimitri had finally moved. He had more or less fallen back onto the bed. His boots still laced tightly up to his calves, his bulky armor pinching tight over bruises and aching muscles, his ridiculous overcoat used for a blanket. His face was completely obscured by his hair. It would poor sleep, and perhaps only last an hour at most, but Felix did not care. His work was done.  
  
Felix turned away at once. He closed his eyes as he stole his away out of Dimitri’s chambers. He had to. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t dare to see. Ghosts and nightmares and promises to dead men.  
  
He refused to see his brother tonight. Just...not tonight, as tired as he felt.  
  
His wounded hip was already blooming purple as a lily. The ache in his shoulder muscle was now hardened until he could hardly move it. He had carried this means of containing stress since he was a small boy, and when the stress took him, it always meant a poor night of sleep, if any at that, for him as well. He reached up to touch the pulse of hot, swollen skin along his left shoulder blade. Too late. He resisted an angry groan at what he had done to himself, getting himself so wound up over Dimitri that he’d ruined his own evening.  
  
But still. Not tonight. Tonight could still be salvageable. Because he did not see Glenn.  
  
As with other more miserable nights, when Felix looked back into Dimitri’s dark room...that is exactly whom he saw.  
  
The body on the bed was no longer alive. The body on the bed was no longer his prince’s. It was Glenn’s crumpled body, littered with great spears that stuck out from every inch of him like the thorny branches of a tree, hardly able to breathe with the blood filling his mouth, the wet, labored breathing and squelching of organs, shredded and leaking. It was said it took fifteen men to end his brother’s life. That Glenn had fought so hard and for so long, the knight’s body was drained of blood, and then he still moved; he was nothing more than a vengeful spector that slew men with an inhuman will. It was said that when Glenn Fraldarius finally died, he did so whispering his soul to return to haunt the dreams of his murderers. Little did he ever know how he had returned for his little brother as well. With Glenn’s hand, slithering out and long, too long, long bone-like fingers, whispering for Felix, whispering _ for the pain to end, Felix, Felix, Felix, why didn’t you save me, Felix! _ _  
_  
No. He had refused to look back and see Glenn.  
  
With that knowledge, he could at least try to sleep. He rubbed again at his shoulder and then closed the door behind him with a soft thud.

* * *

  
“Oh, Felix.” A soft-spoken voice was speaking to him quickly, floating somewhere just above his head. “I thought I’d find you here.”  
  
Felix lifted his head to spy Ashe.  
  
The world gave Felix a blurry multicolored little spin, like when he had watched Ingantz secretly mixing his paint chips, as he searched for his friend’s face. Per usual, an unending habit of his commitment to knighthood, Ashe was standing before Felix with a thick tome in his hand. The evening sun was now crawling towards the treeline, and soon, it would be fully dark. Felix wasn’t sure when that had happened. He had sat on the steps just outside of Dimitri’s chambers to wait it out. He was certain Dimitri would fly out of the door at any moment, perhaps angry enough to hurt someone else, and Felix couldn’t bring himself to leave that to chance.  
  
Better awake, Felix felt his head _ throb. _ He reached up to touch the back of his head. His hair had come undone just a bit in his sleep but the rest of his lifted hair still stayed in place. Only now he realized that the hairs along his scalp felt tender to his fingertips. Great. He’d given himself a headache, too. Felix sighed again, this time clearly for Ashe to see. Only now he was certain Ashe had taken it the wrong way.  
  
“Oh no,” Ashe’s voice took on that girlish, breathy tone when he felt like he’d screwed up. “Did I wake you? I’m so sorry, Felix. I didn’t know.”  
  
“You’re fine, Ashe.” Felix ran a hand down his face. He felt his own breath warming his cold fingers. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
“Oh. So you weren’t sleeping outside of Dimitri’s room?”  
  
“Ashe.” Felix fixed his tone to be colder. He pulled himself up in a weak attempt to seem like he hadn’t dozed off into his knees. The way he had stretched out his muscles in his nap at least made his shoulders feel a bit better. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“Oh, ah, yes.” Ashe began happily. “I was thinking if I might see Dimitri. I found this excellent book in the library, and, well, I was thinking, if Dimitri doesn’t feel like talking to us, perhaps I could read it to him.” Felix wasn’t sure if he was still groggy, but the kid’s freckles seemed to move with his energy. Well, “kid”. Ashe wasn’t but a year younger than Felix himself, but there was a way by which he carried himself that just felt...more...innocent. And he was always full of energy.  
  
“You...want to read Dimitri a book?” The look over Felix’s face must have been a sight for the kid.  
  
A spidery nervousness clouded Ashe’s good natured grin. “I know you think it’s stupid.”  
  
Felix debated a clear answer. “What in the world makes you think that’ll help anything?”

Felix resisted the urge to chide the younger boy. He’d send him away from the sleeping quarters and off to do something more important, like staying the hell away from Dimitri, and, by proxy, himself, but all Felix could do was stare in perplexity. Perhaps Dimitri was not the only one worn down into rash, unsure articulation. He did not mean for his consternation of Ashe to seem, if ironically sexist, but practical.  
  
Ashe was, indeed, a man now, if those five years growing had anything to say about it. Ashe was a bit taller, a bit bigger in his shoulders, and his legs longer, but he was also, as that blathering idiot Lorenz would put it, “tender-hearted”. There were facts to this that lead Felix to undermine Ashe’s time alone with Dimitri, nearly the same way he minded the women. Ashe was undoubtly the weakest of the men in the Professor’s rag-tag army, besides perhaps Linhardt, but even then, that one seemed to always know more than he ever let on, and his brilliant magical talent reassured Felix that if Dimitri became unhinged, Linhardt would be able to take care of himself.  
  
“Well. When we were younger, Dimitri always reminded me of those knights—you know, the true blood ones. The ones that were born to be heroes.” He paused, clearly a tad embarrassed, and he rushed through the rest. “And I...I haven’t had the nerve to talk to Dimitri lately...I just thought...I mean, who doesn’t love a good book, you know?”  
  
Felix gave Ashe a very pointed stare.  
  
“Besides you,” Ashe conceded with a short rise and fall of his shoulders, nonplussed.  
  
“Ashe.” Felix fought to gather, without offense, what he meant when he said: “Dimitri...he doesn’t want to see you.”  
  
“I know.” Ashe bounded back, a true volley in his voice, rearing for a fight. “But what if I want to see him?”  
  
Felix gave a slow shake of his head. He never thought he’d have to spell this out to the kid.  
  
“He’s sick, Ashe. Really sick. You’ve seen him, haven’t you? A book isn’t going to change that.” Felix rocked himself onto his heels, now standing a near half a head-length taller than Ashe. “I mean, it’s—cute or whatever—but this isn’t like one of your books, Ashe. And he’s. Argh.” Felix caught his face inside his hand again. “He’s impossible to understand.”  
  
“Has anyone else come to see him as of late? Besides you? So you get to see him and I can’t?”  
  
Felix sighed silently through the space of his fingers. “I don’t really see him, Ashe. I just try to get him to sleep or else he’s just in the way of the nuns.”  
  
Here, Ashe fell silent for a long moment. “Oh. So he isn't sleeping?”  
  
“Not for long, anyway.”  
  
Another moment. “Well..maybe that’s what I could do. I could help him sleep.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“With the book,” Ashe held it up hopefully. “Lord Lonato read to me when I was ill, and it always made me feel better. And I’ve been told I'm’a pretty good narrator.” He grinned again, all freckles and earnestness. It made Felix’s heart twist again, a strange feeling, like an empty hollow space, slowly becoming full. “My own siblings have told me so.”  
  
Could the mad boar prince comprehend words anymore? Felix wondered faintly.  
  
“...Alright.” Felix found himself saying.  
  
Ashe’s eyes lit up, large and fragile. “Really?”  
  
“As long as I’m in there with you, sure. I really don’t care.”  
  
“Oh! Oh, wonderful.” Ashe chirped again. “I’ve wanted to share this book with you, as well.”  
  
“Wait.” Felix carefully studied Ashe, and waited for him to calm before he continued on. “Ashe. I want you to be aware of something. It’s important.”  
  
“...Yes?” Ashe intoned, his voice somehow softer.  
  
Felix waited. The words seemed to slip out of his grasp, like a candle’s smoke. What he had wanted to do was be intimidating and blunt, but he just felt worn. He probably looked it, too. His hip pulsed with a dull, deep pain. He wanted to sit down again, very badly, but instead he said: “Dimitri might say something, or worse, do something, like try to hurt you, but I promise I won’t let that happen, okay? Just don’t make too big of movements, and don’t touch him.”  
  
A huge blink. Clearly, the idea of Ashe being in danger from reading his prince a book was a thought that had never crossed his mind before. “Oh.”  
  
“And...listen, whatever he says, if he even says anything.” Felix fixed his eyes to the ground, unwilling to look into Ashe’s eyes as he said: “...Don’t take it to heart. He doesn’t mean it.”  
  
Ashe said nothing to this. And Felix was too much of a coward to see whatever pass through the kid’s eyes come and then go. He was sure it was something like heart-break. Something forlorn, like when Felix had to bury his older brother deep into the cold wet ground. Dimitri, Ashe’s imagined hero from a nursery-book, dead and gone.  
  
At the door, Ashe stopped short. “Oh, say, Felix?”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“Do you remember what Dimitri’s favourite chapter is? I know this book is his favourite but I’d like to read him the parts he’d like best.”  
  
A cold, sharp pain entered through Felix’s chest, rung like a bell for a moment, and then fell silent. He couldn’t remember. “I don’t know.”  
  
Ashe looked crestfallen. “Ah, that’s okay. Maybe I can ask him myself.”  
  
Felix resisted shaking his head. He was too tired to tell the hope-filled when a lost cause was a lost cause.

* * *

  
The room felt cold and dark. Ashe and Felix said little to one another as they adjusted a candle, the light from the window, and, finally, a chair for Ashe to sit it. It was the very one Felix had pulled out earlier, pulled just a hair closer to the edge of the bed.  
  
With no other chairs in the room, Felix pushed himself against the far wall. He had wanted to stand closer to Ashe, just in case, but he also really wanted to sit down, just for a moment.  
  
When Ashe didn’t object to Felix sitting on the floor, Felix felt himself lean a little more comfortably against the wall. There would be no way he could nod off now. The protesting of his bruised hip and shoulder made quite the work of that. Besides, his dark eyes were very open now, constantly scanning the shadowed corner where Dimitri laid.  
  
And, incredibly, Dimitri was still lying down. His pale blue eye was open, however. The small hope that he had rested from the time that Felix had left him earlier was snuffed out as soon as they had entered the room. But Dimitri also made no noise, not even to greet the two men, and not even when Ashe sat down in the chair, book perched on his knees.   
  
“Huh-hi, Dimitri.” Ashe began, his gentle voice distinctly softer, even as he stumbled over the first word. Even Felix had to strain to hear the first bit of Ashe’s greeting. “I’m really happy to see you.”  
  
Again, Felix felt his heart jabbed again with a tiny unexplainable thorn. He said nothing, curious to how Ashe would continue his banter when Dimitri wouldn’t reply.  
  
“Felix is here, too, right, Felix?” Ashe turned slowly, just as Felix had cautioned, and gestured to Felix’s darkened form to the back of the room.  
  
“Yup. Sure. Here.”  
  
“Uh.” A short swallow popped in the quiet. “I heard you weren’t feeling well, and, ah, well, I thought that I might do something for you that made me feel better when I was sick.” There was a rustling of pages, fingers smoothing over paper, the sound crisp and light. “Um. If I recall correctly _ The Knight and The Moon Maiden _ was one of your favourite books in the library, right, Dimitri?”  
  
A short pause. For a second, Felix wondered if Dimitri actually might respond, but clearly the boar prince was mentally lost again, far and away to somewhere else.  
  
Equally surprisingly, this didn’t seem to bother Ashe as much as it had originally bothered Felix.  
  
“It’s one of my favourites, too, you know?” Ashe ventured on. More pages shifted as Ashe’s fingers searched through the tome, the pattering sound smoothing together like the quick pouring of water. Felix adjusted his legs over the floor, trying not to let them go numb. “I was thinking I might read do you for a while, if, um, that’s all right with you...sir.”  
  
Felix swallowed a rude snicker. That little ‘sir’ tacked on the end of Ashe’s question was just...so like Ashe.  
  
Another pause. And then. Then.  
  
Dimitri stirred. He barely moved from his place on the bed, but his voice, rough from disuse, was unmistakable. “...Ashe?”  
  
“Yes?” Ashe’s voice fluttered nervously. “I—I don’t mean to be a bother to you, sir.”  
  
“You’re...here?”  
  
“Yes. With _ The Knight and The Moon Maiden_. Um. I asked Felix if it was okay if I read it to you. He said you were sick.”  
  
From the floor, muscles tensing like a stalking predator, nerves and stomach acid rising in a discreet fear that any moment from now, Dimitri’s large hand would be wrapped around Ashe’s thin throat. Felix resisted correcting Ashe. He needn’t bring him into this stunt. Besides, Ashe was getting further in minutes than Felix had in days, in months.  
  
“Oh.” came Dimitri’s exhale. “I...I don’t understand…”  
  
“It’d be my pleasure to read to you. I know I love it. Sometimes Ingrid and I read passages to each other.” Ashe began, his voice taking on an overly gentle, slow measured tone, as if talking to a frightened child. Perhaps he was better prepared for this moment than Felix had originally thought.  
  
“In..grid.” Dimitri tasted the word inside of his dry mouth. “Is...she?”  
  
Ashe faltered. “Is she, what, sir?”  
  
Dimitri said nothing more, the thought already entangled in so many others.  
  
“Just read to him, Ashe.” Felix prompted from the floor. If Ashe wanted to play guessing games with Dimitri’s shattered psyche, they’d be here all night.  
  
“Ah, right. Okay.” Ashe corrected quickly. “Do you have a favourite chapter, Dimitri? For me to start from?”  
  
Again, Dimitri said nothing more. But Ashe pressed on.  
  
“That’s fine,” he added softly. “I like the beginning just fine. Sometimes it’s better to start there anyway.”  
  
And so, Ashe began reading. While at first he seemed uncertain, soon, like water shifting thinly over pebbles, he found his pacing, and the words ran over his lips with little pause. And...Dimitri seemed to honestly react to it. Not in a big way, not in a physical way...but slowly, ever so slowly, Felix spied Dimitri’s eyelid drifting, and, soon, it stayed closed…  
  
Minutes at first staggered by, but then they turned into a finger-length of time, became a fist full, became...time-less. Uninterested in the story, Felix struggled to keep himself occupied. He had started by leaning against the wall, but slowly, his back begging him to take the weight of his body away, he found himself unconsciously, steadily, pooling to the floor, one arm curled to support his chin as he lay on his stomach. He wouldn’t sleep. He promised himself he wouldn’t, and he had to make sure Ashe was fine…  
  
A little glimmer of light caught his eye, lazily staring at his own wrist in the moonlight. His brow furrowed gently, unsure. He reached out to tap at the light. The pad of his finger touched something small and metal. Confused, he brought his wrist forward, and realized what it was. A charm bracelet. How long had he carried it around? He was grateful to didn’t feel like berating himself. It had originally been Annette’s, but she had placed it on his wrist as some type of nonsensical prank, and he had just...forgotten, it seemed. It was light and hardly impeded much of the use of his wrist, so what did matter to him? And...was that a scent attached to it? He brought it closer to his face to check, and then found he didn’t have the strength to pull it away. It was a scent, specifically Annette’s, like rose-petals, like that miserable tea she enjoyed drinking...it was so stupid...he’d have to bring it back to her at some point...  
  
...He caught his eyes sliding down. He wanted to slap hard at his face, anything to keep him awake, but it was so impossibly hard. He felt heavy and sore and the world was slow and quiet, with the steady rhythm of Ashe’s soft voice covering the busy night-time noise of the monastery, and Annette’s scent...

* * *

  
“Ashe,” Felix whispered. His voice was low and smooth. “Wake up.”  
  
Ashe’s eyes fluttered open. He slowly raised his head backwards to find Felix frowning at him, the image upside down. The room was pitch black now. The candle had burned out hours ago, and the moon hid itself behind a lone cloud. His knee rattled the chair faintly and the book tilted out of his lap. “A’huh..?”  
  
Felix caught the bulk of the tome before it hit the floor as Ashe weakly pushed himself up in the chair. “What..happened?”  
  
Poor kid. He looked miserable to have fallen asleep in that chair. His pleasant voice now sounded raw and delicate, like he really had to work to get his words out. “‘Lix? I didn’t mean to…”  
  
“Easy.” Felix glanced at Dimitri’s sleeping form, at once ready to pull Ashe away, weary of lions and their lack of sleep, but he never moved. His chest pushed itself up slowly, and then down steadily, the deepest sleep Felix had seen Dimitri in...in years, it felt like. His thick blond hair had moved from his face in his sleep, and resting there, Felix swore Dimitri was loosely smiling..a real look of peace over his entire face, every part relaxed, every part resting. “Looks like your plan worked.”  
  
“It did?” Ashe’s once large eyes looked small and sleepy. The word ‘did’ didn’t actually make its way to a clear volume. His voice merely cracked, dry and raspy, and Felix picked up the rest of the question for himself.  
  
“Yeah. You did really well, Ashe.” Felix was grateful he had stirred awake when he did. Firstly because he would want to get Ashe away from Dimitri and to bed before morning—how long had the kid actually been reading? From the sound of him, he’d worn his voice out for...hours...which made Felix nervous, unsure of the time or how Ashe was feeling. Secondly, because his shoulder was _ shrieking _ at him, hateful and breathlessly throbbing at him for daring to sleep on a hard surface. Goddess, _ why. _  
  
“M’ glad,” Ashe said, his voice a tiny, thin whisper. His cloudy eyes slid closed again. Felix gave him another gentle shake.  
  
“Come on, kid.”  
  
“M’,” Ashe returned, but it was more an uncomfortable whimper from a too-tired child.  
  
At once, Felix felt done. Far too done. He’d fix it himself, just like Dimitri, and any other terrible problem anyone else wanted to place on his shoulders tonight, fine, who cares. And so, lifting carefully, he found himself gathering Ashe’s light body in his arms to carry him back to his room. Now, Felix was exhausted. His arms and shoulder and back now wished death on him. But, for once in his life, the pain felt worth it, if not for Ashe’s sake, but maybe, just maybe, for Dimitri’s.

* * *

“Felix?” Annette had stolen in front of him, so quickly, Felix nearly jumped straight out of his skin, and he tightened his grip over Ashe. 

In response, Ashe barely stirred, his head resting dimly against Felix’s chest. Annette crossed her arms over her chest, indignant, her long, dress-like nightgown glowing white and gold in the moonlight peeking through the monastery halls. The sleeves were a little over long, perhaps borrowed Mercedes, and it made Annette look all more tiny before him. Felix smiled at her, unsure of what to say, or even begin with what he was doing.  
  
“Shh.” Felix told her.  
  
“‘Shh’, yourself, Felix!” Annette didn’t so much bristle in a womanly way, like Hilda or Dorothea would have, but she did raise her shoulders in order to puff herself up like an angry kitten, and had it been any other moment, he would have mocked her for it. Her expression then quickly changed from annoyed to genuinely worried. “...Is Ashe okay?”  
  
“He’s fine. He’s asleep. You’re gonna wake him up.”  
  
“Why is he asleep and in _ your arms?” _ She honestly sounded offended.  
  
“Jealous?” Felix purred, both at once terrified at the joke, and, at once, affronted by the pink that had risen up to colour her cheeks. Her auburn hair brought out the best tones of her pale skin—blood was so easy to bring to the surface of her skin. A little trick he enjoyed all for himself. When her eyes flashed, clearly unsure and shocked, just like Felix was himself, Felix threw his back head to laugh, muffling the sound through closed lips.  
  
He blamed it on being tired.  
  
“Wh-where are you going with him, anyway?” Smooth as ever, Annette avoided a direct response.  
  
“Back to his room. I’m going to drop him on his bed and leave. Stop following me, you’re making it weird.”  
  
“You wish. I’m coming, too, because I don’t buy why Ashe was with you in the first place.”  
  
“Ugh.” Felix thinly protested her. His headache was tapping against his skull again. He just couldn’t shake it.  
  
They arrived at Ashe’s meager room and Felix quickly did as he said. However, unlike Dimitri, he found himself staring over Ashe’s sleeping form, for just a moment, and he waited. He wasn’t sure why, not even when Annette poked her head around the frame of the door, staring at him staring at Ashe, and Felix felt a flush to his face. It was just... hadn’t he been here before? Not….not him carrying Ashe but...oh…  
  
It rushed to Felix, a memory that overtook him, much like standing up too fast after a training session. Felix was the one being carried and...it was Glenn. Glenn, who had once read to him, and picked his too tired, too weak body from the ground. Glenn, who had carried him and tucked him into a warm bed, limp and sick and needy. As if by reflex, Felix brought his own hand down to gently push back the bits of hair stuck to Ashe’s cheek. Of lukewarm soup and too hot sheets, the faint scent of illness, his brother’s dark eyes peering down at him, somehow radiating both smugness and concern.  
  
“...Lonato?” came Ashe’s muddled reply, thickened by sleep.  
  
Caught, Felix ripped his hand away.  
  
He wasn’t sure what had come over him. He usually hated touching others, and certainly he had learned his lesson from Dimitri, but it didn’t seem to matter. Felix watched as Ashe’s thin eyelashes fluttered, once, then they rested again, clearly asleep.  
  
He had thought of many a terrible thing about Ashe in their time at school together, but this, Felix could not take from the kid. He had endless amounts of integrity. Ashe had stayed awake long enough to out due Felix’s own ability to force himself awake. Not only that, but so far Ashe’s soft-spoken, warm voice seemed to be the only thing that took the boar prince down. He had never seen Dimitri sleep for more than an hour, maybe two. By all accounts, it had been nearly four since Ashe sat down on that uncomfortable wooden chair.

A light tug on his sleeve dropped Felix from his revery. He glanced down to find Annette, her small hand hovering over his wrist. She jerked her head towards the door and moved towards it, her grip on his sleeve coaxing him away from Gl...away from Ashe.  
  
They were outside of Felix’s sleeping quarters now. Annette didn’t seem much to mind. When Felix unlocked the door to his bedroom, she slipped in gently behind him.  
  
He glanced at her. She was pouting now, her mouth taking on that full-lipped look. He chuckled again. He took a look around his room. It really hadn’t changed much since he saw it those five years ago. Maybe the rug had been in better shape, the door hadn’t been busted in, the lock rusted with time and rain. At least his old bed was still just as comfortable as ever—oh.  
  
Annette was still here, awaiting an answer.  
  
“Uh. Sorry, you had to see that.” Felix said stiffly. He had moved further into his bedroom and sat down, far too grateful, on the side of his mattress. He placed a hand over his boots, tugged mournfully at the laces, before giving up. He didn’t so much as lean gracefully back into the mattress as much as slump. His shoulders burned in pain.  
  
“Well,” Annette returned quietly. “You did a really kind thing, Felix. So, don’t apologize for it.”

Felix looked up at the ceiling. “I really didn’t but fine.”  
  
Annette stepped a little closer into the room. Her large blue eyes seemed almost...nervous. Felix darted his eyes to her and then back to the ceiling. She was an odd, odd girl.  
  
“It’s just my room, Annette. Got a problem with it?”  
  
“No,” Annette huffed at once. “It’s just…what do you mean you didn’t do a kind thing?” Felix felt himself involuntarily grin at her pouty, endearing pick at the word ‘kind’.

“Hey, here’s a good question,” Felix shot back at her. “What are you doing up so late, hm?”  
  
“I—I definitely wasn’t following you! I was—I heard walking and so I just. I followed it.”  
  
At this, Felix pushed himself up, palms loose against the mattress, shoulders protesting, just to look at her. He flexed a dark brow at her.  
  
“That could be dangerous.” He frowned.

“Around the monastery?” Now, she turned to grin widely at him. “I can take care of myself.”

A flicker from the pain of his aching head caused Felix to tighten his frown. “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”  
  
Annette peered at him. She was padding ever closer now. She had taken off her slippers, too, and even her toes looked small and delicate, plush into the rough rug of his bedroom. Huh. What a strange day for it to end with Annette of all people standing in his bedroom, clad in her nightgown. He almost imagined what it might be like to not live alone. A life after the war. A life after pain and death and if the boar prince redeemed himself back into humanity, where here, Felix Fraldarius wouldn’t be genuinely afraid if Annette walked around at any time she wanted, safe from Dimitri in his monstrous state.  
  
“What did you mean, then?” Annette prodded him again.  
  
Of course she would. His shoulders throbbed again, high and tight, his whole upper back on fire, and he laid back over his bed again. He was tired. It was so late. He just wanted for this day to be over.

“Nothing.” Felix snapped. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Annette. Never mind. If you’re done, just leave. Door’s there.”  
  
Annette refused to move. She sighed quietly.  
  
“...I think I know what you meant.” She was an arm’s length away, then a hand, until, the bed dipped softly, and she was sitting beside him. “No one wants to say it, but this is about Dimitri, right? About him walking around all night.” She swallowed, the sound tight in her throat. Her blue eyes narrowed. “I want you to know that me and the rest of the women here, we aren’t idiots, okay? We know what might happen. You don’t have to go out of your way to be some...” she stopped.  
  
She couldn’t say it. Not to Felix. He was the last one in line to be anything like a knight in shining armor. Not that Annette even wanted that from him.  
  
“So, what were you doing with Ashe? And what does it have to do with Dimitri?”  
  
Felix couldn’t help it. He reached up and rubbed faintly at his temple. He didn’t want to make it obvious that he was in pain, but he couldn’t stand it for much longer. A small nervous part of him nibbled at the back of his brain; the strange, wishful part, that worried she’d take it the wrong way and leave.  
  
“I don’t know. I try to keep him out of the nuns’ way during the night. I take him back to his bedroom, he stares at me, he says nothing, and then I leave.” He turned his head back to look at her, side-ways. “Ashe just caught me at the tail end of it, and…” Felix gave a sigh. His fingers hit a tender point and the flash of relief ruined his train of thought.  
  
“And?” Annette prompted curiously.  
  
“Um. He wanted to read Dimitri a book.” Felix mumbled.  
  
Annette blinked. Had she heard Felix correctly? “...A book?”  
  
“Yeah. I don’t know. He fell asleep, Dimitri fell asleep,” he skipped over telling Annette that, he, too, had stupidly passed out, “so I picked Ashe up and…” he gave a weak fan of his fingers at her. “Here we are.”  
  
Annette went suspiciously quiet. Then, a small giggle escaped her. “That’s so like Ashe. Wow.”  
  
“Yeah.” Felix said flatly. “So, now you know. Don’t make it weird, okay?”  
  
Annette gave a small smirk. “Weird in what way? Accidentally letting it slip that you care about people?”  
  
“See, you're making it worse.” Felix said tiredly. “I already told you I didn’t care.”

A pause met them both. Annette swung her legs gently. From where she sat along his bed, Annette’s legs didn’t reach the floor. Felix rolled his head away from her, unsure of how his face might look.  
  
"You know, for someone who pretends not to care, you just put two grown men to bed.”  
  
At this, Felix felt himself give a reflexive laugh. He didn’t remember the last time he had laughed this much; he again blamed his tiredness.  
  
Felix closed his eyes. It didn’t matter much now, with the darkness of night, if he kept them open. Only if he strained could he really make out Annette in the short distance between them.  
  
For whatever reason, Annette’s quick breathing felt...closer?  
  
Felix cracked open an eye. He found Annette truly was closer, her long hair trailing close to his neck as she peered over him. Her face was damasked, but she was just so...Annette...that he could immediately tell she was worried, her lips a little pouty, her eyes open wide to study him.  
  
“...What is it?” Felix squinted his dark eyes right back at her.  
  
“Are you in pain?” Her voice somehow sounded softer. Like whispering somehow helped him.  
  
Another loose chuckle from Felix. “...Nah. Tired.”  
  
“Oh.” She deflated. “Sorry. I just thought I could help.”  
  
That eyebrow again. That was the second time he had used it against her. She hated it, how he looked, his long body draped across his bed, low-voiced and muted, but there was something about his eyes now. They looked tired, sure, but mostly in pain. Why would he pretend to not be in pain? Was this his Felix way of politely denying her help? At once, Annette’s heart felt a little tighter. Her heart, a door with a thick lock and several keys that kept her safe from people that tried to come in...and leave her too soon.  
  
When Felix didn’t ask for more information, Annette found herself nervously filling the silence.  
  
“It’s my magic. I know I’m studying to be a warlock but I know a little white magic.” That pretty pink blush returned to her cheeks. She looked silver in the low light. Felix found himself steadily staring at her, unable to look away. “Mercie’s been teaching me some tricks here and there.” She stared down at her hands, uncomfortable under his dark gaze.  
  
“Um. It’s not a big deal.” He allowed his eyes to close again, this time moving the palm of his hand to cover the pulsing under his left eye. “It’s just a headache.”  
  
“I could help, is all.” Annette repeated quietly. “I understand if not, though. I know I...kind of tend to screw things up.”  
  
Oh. Felix felt that nibble at his growing anxiety give a harsh tug, that empty place inside of his heart, suddenly twisted. “That’s...that’s not what I mean.”  
  
Sweet Sothis, arguing with Annette was honestly maddening right now. His shoulders ached almost in time to his every blink, like the pain was trickling down his entire body, hot and sweaty and desperate to not act like a complete asshole.  
  
“Annette.” Felix slowly pulled himself up to meet her eye level. “Do you really feel like that?”  
  
Her soft blue eyes looked down at his hands. “When you were carrying Ashe. You limped.”  
  
Ah. That’d be because of his hip. In resignation, Felix leaned back on his palms. The mattress dipped with the change in weight. He looked up at the ceiling. His face looked tight and pale.  
  
Fine. He’d bite.  
  
“What would you suggest would help, then?”  
  
“If it’s a tension headache, you should let down your hair.”  
  
“Alright, but.” He glanced at her shyly. “I can’t...lift my arms anymore.”  
  
Annette at once panicked. She moved over to Felix, hands fluttering over the air about him, as if unsure where to begin first. Her cute, unsure dance of what to do, what to say, where to go was all at once perfect and, unsurprisingly, painful, as her weight pushed around his body. “What—what do you mean? How? Should I take you to the infirmary? Felix?!”  
  
Felix sighed into her sudden, predictable, wonderful rush of being upset, of...caring for him...he felt frozen, unsure of where to go from here. Felix pushed in a breath, then let it out.  
  
Annette. This was just Annette and...and he was too tired...in too much pain...to hide this anymore. And he didn’t want to hide it from her. That careful, timid, sweet look in her eye. He wanted to die under that gaze, honestly. He didn’t understand her at all. How could someone as good-natured as her, look at someone like him with such...kindness?  
  
“Annette.” Felix said simply.  
  
She calmed. Her skin flushed pink and her hair had gone wild at her shoulders. She had placed her palms gently over the tops of his shoulders now, standing in front of him. “...What?”  
  
“I thought of how you can help.” Carefully, he lifted his hands and, firstly, placed his right hand over her left hip, his fingers bunched over the soft fabric of her nightgown.  
  
Her eyes widened. “Um?”  
  
“Ah.” He then dropped his hand. “Sorry. It’s hard to think right now.” His dark eyes closed, even his black eyelashes shadowed over his pale skin. “What I’m trying to say is that, I need you to take down my hair.” His lids tightened, unwilling to look at her. “It’s not just my head that hurts. M...my whole body does. And I can’t lift my arms because of that. So...if you want, you can...um…” his voice became very, very quiet. “Sit in my lap, and you can reach better, if you wanted.”  
  
Annette, so close in the dark, realize that he was being honest. He was... embarrassed. Her heart picked up, just for a moment. Felix was...asking her to touch him? Asking her for help? Genuinely? And...she blushed. It was awfully intimate. Her dressing gown and where his hand had once been, hot and tight over her hip. However, she pushed the idea aside.  
  
She could see it clear in his eyes. He was in pain and he meant this. He wasn’t trying to slease his way under her dress like Sylvain. And Felix, well, he was nothing like those shirtless knights in those dirty books Professor Manuela was always accidentally leaving around the girls’ privy. Not that Annette ever peeked into those books...often.  
  
Okay. Annette steeled herself. Carefully, using the bed for leverage, Annette found herself seated in Felix’s lap. Her thighs straddling Felix’s, Annette tried to appear somewhat casual, a friend helping a friend, with her face staring straight into Felix’s own. She watched how he had swallowed as she had climbed into his lap, unexpectedly nervous. It was so strange. Felix always seemed so...cool.  
  
Well. It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one.  
  
“Does, um.” She tried to keep her voice as normal as possible. “Am I hurting you?”  
  
Through the twinge of pain resting in his eyes, Felix smirked, just a little, at her. “You weigh about 100 pounds soaking wet.”  
  
She glared at him at about the same time that she had wrapped her arms around his neck, giving a soft tug. When Felix flinched, she instantly pulled away. “Sorry! I was trying to be funny. That wasn’t funny. I’m so sorry, Felix.” She began to squirm off of his lap. “I should have known I’d already ruin this…”  
  
“Stop.” Felix said. “Relax.” His own hands moved, carefully, to touch at her side. He took a small pinch of her nightgown between his fingers and rubbed it between each digit. At this, the frown on his face lessened. “It’s alright.” Then, slowly, carefully, he ducked his head down towards her. “Just do it.”  
  
Annette felt her throat become very dry. “Do you ever take your hair down, like maybe before you go to sleep?”  
  
“Sometimes. I forget about it a lot.”  
  
She gingerly pulled her hands from around his neck, trailing up to touch at the tight bands that held his hair up. When she first touched at Felix’s hair, she had nearly pulled back in surprise. It always looked about as cool and tough as Felix himself. But touching it now, it felt softer, feather-fine. She worked a single finger under the braid, band, and bobby-pin, easing it out as carefully as she could. By all accounts, perhaps his sweat that made the hairs coarse and brittle or her position, it was harder than expected.  
  
“Not to hurry you, Annette,” Felix interrupted after a minute. “But I’d rather it just be down already. I don’t care if it hurts; it usually does.”  
  
At this, Annette quirked her own brow at him. “It usually hurts?”

“Yeah,” Felix continued. His voice sounded terse, as if confessing a secret just for her. “Don’t ask why. It just does.”  
  
“It sounds like you have a sensitive scalp.” Annette pulled, guilty as it had to hurt, at the back centered crown of his head.  
  
She tried to off-set her dulling pulling with occasionally lingering the tips of her nails against the natural flow of his part. She had loved when her mother played with her hair as a child. She could only hope it was a decent distraction from the mess she was silently working through. In a way, knot by knot, spooling out from the braid, and eventually the coil from the messy pony’s tail, Annette felt oddly relieved that Felix had asked for her help. She couldn’t help but to feel protective at the idea of Felix, pain against pain, trying to take his hair down himself.  
  
She couldn’t understand the resistance she had seen for so long. He had never been particularly mean to her in that barbed tongued way he could be with the others, but he was never quite certain of her, either.  
  
“Women.” Felix allotted, his voice tight inside of his throat, in pain, until, finally, he had moved his chest even closer towards Annette, unconsciously leaning towards the movement of her fingers. He cleared his throat softly, although his voice had become husky in relief. “The secrets you have against men.”  
  
Annette blushed. The way his voice sounded...now that reminded her of those naughty knight books. But still, she swallowed dryly, and the heat rushed to her face again. She always enjoyed Felix’s voice but now, everything felt different. And she shouldn’t push it to be something it wasn’t.  
  
It wasn’t that way...was it? It was hard to tell. So much had changed in the last five years. The church. The war. Mercie and Hilda and Lorenz and Ingantz and Ashe. Dimitri, for certain. Everything except the stoic professor, perhaps. But so had Felix, and, in turn, so had her feelings.  
  
Oh, who was she kidding? She’d _ always _ crushed hard on Felix. She just knew her place. She knew what she looked like, particularly back then, when her tiny, almost child-like body never seemed to match Mercie’s beautiful, busty-stance or Dorothea’s long-legged grace. Even in her warlock uniform, she had always felt...lesser. And with so many other women, powerful and smart and not screw ups, why would Felix ever look at her in…that...way?  
  
...He was looking at her.  
  
“Felix, I’m done now. Does it feel any better?” Annette murmured. Her hands felt shaky with nothing else to do. “Do you want me to get off of you now?”  
  
“Um,” Felix articulated. He blinked at her, slowly, very slowly, as if he wanted to close his eyes.  
  
She carefully reached up to place a curl behind his ear, and, as if desperate for warmth, for skin, Felix pressed his temple against the back of her hand. For a moment, Felix nearly pulled back, unsure of this, of her reaction, if it was okay, but then the back of her hand felt so cool against this throbbing temple. He decided he didn’t care. He was selfish. He worried, just a little, that she felt used. But then the coolness faded, absorbed by his hot skin, and he skated his face further along the back of her hand, wanting more skin, more relief.  
  
His dark eyes had closed, giving up his fight with his heavy lids. “What did you say? Before? Sorry.”  
  
Stunned, Annette’s heart leapt high in her throat. “I...I asked if you wanted me to get off of you.”  
  
Again, curled against her hand, Felix slowly lifted his head away. His pale eyelids twitched, unwilling to open, but then those dark eyes appeared again. Oh wow. Annette flushed. His eyes looked unapologetically drowsy. The tightness she had seen in his face minutes earlier had lifted. But Felix...he never looked like this...open and...unshielded...with her.  
  
She really was making him feel better, somehow. And again, everything felt different. Softer. Like his hair, now loosely curling down. It was really quite long once the braiding had come undone. It reached just at his shoulders, dark, shiny, and smooth in the moonlight. Seated over his lap, Annette felt like she was almost too close to him, too warm, too much, and it worried her if she could somehow make him feel worse. But each time she slightly tested this idea, inched away, Felix’s body seemed to follow her, consciously or unconsciously, and eventually she stopped fighting it.  
  
She would stay. And she could do more.  
  
She would do more. And, if Felix wanted more, especially with his hair, she was more than happy to oblige.

Felix Fraldarius felt fragile in her arms. He looked fragile. Annette would give anything to make this moment last forever.  
  
The tight door around Annette’s heart felt cracked open, just an inch. She had always imagined this: Felix’s fine, dark hair caught around her fingers. But that was always where the dream had stayed: in her imagination. It felt so strange to see this part of him; Felix’s whole demeanor was sharp and tight and that never loosened. It made sense to Annette, if not in the practical sense of Felix’s hair getting in the way of his fighting. It was his choice to never wear his hair down around the others. Annette couldn’t help but wonder about his comment, about the ache of his head, be they muscle or scalp, and if he wore it down at all, and if that ever created any extra tension around the fixed bands in his hair. Certainly, Annette reasoned, he knew better. He was just teasing about not knowing about hypertension and wearing one’s hair up in a tight knot. Most of the girls in Garreg Mach she ever spoke with knew the simple rule that pony’s tails caused headaches if worn up for far too long.  
  
And, here Felix was. His face, pale and worn, resting against her hand. She moved her hand away, and, once Felix decided not to follow the movement, she rested both of her arms back along his shoulders. She planned her next moves with a careful eye. A headache wouldn’t last long now under her fingers. And, gosh, he was just so...sweet. And soft. And she really, really wanted to tell him how nice he looked, when his teeth weren’t bared and his mouth wasn’t frowning. This sleepy, awaiting Felix felt so special to her. He was...beautiful.  
  
Getting such a rare sight spurred a million reactions in Annette. Her fingers softly pressed along the back of his head, until she used her thumbs to form two points of firm pressure just over the connecting muscle between the top of his neck and low-point of his skull, and, instantly, she felt Felix’s entire body give a _ shudder _ beneath her.  
  
“I—I’m so sorry.” She began at once, panic slipping into her voice. Of course, this would happen, and she’d always, always mess things up somehow, push things just one step too far, and she’d hurt him, like the idiot she was. “Do you want me to stop?”  
  
“No,” was his terse reply.  
  
He slowly moved his head, second by second, down as if it had become suddenly too heavy to hold up by himself. Warm breath moved against the delicate skin along the right side of Annette’s neck. In the pooling shadows of Felix’s room, Annette did not have to try hard to picture in her mind’s eye just how they looked: she in Felix’s lap, him sitting upon the edge of his bed, her hands in his hair, his head resting along her neck and shoulder. She flushed harder.  
  
She wasn’t sure if Felix had moved his head away from her hands to provide guidance towards what he wanted or if it was just him getting more comfortable, but she followed through to her next step. His shoulders and back were next.  
  
It was as if she knew exactly where the pain was the most unbearable. Felix’s mouth tightened, lips closing to swallow back a moan building within him. When she placed her hands, first gently over the swell of his shoulders, he had to focus on not pulling her off of him, the pain burning, burning, burning under the pressure of her palms. Then, she pushed down, rolling the swollen skin and muscle beneath in one slow, forceful knead of her knuckles.  
  
“Too much?” Annette tested. She moved again, that exact motion and pressure, this time using only the strength of her thumbs.  
  
“Ngh.” Came his dull answer. There was the old Felix Annette knew. She’d have laughed at him normally. He nearly sounded annoyed. “How d’you know where to…” he stopped. She had now cooled her fingers in a short chanting spell and was gingerly molding her fingertips straight into the knot. He did not mean to, he truly tried, but his entire body betrayed him at once with a full-body shiver. The force of it rattled Annette herself. A shocked, weak inhale of air against her neck told Annette everything Felix couldn’t.  
  
“Did that feel good?” Annette asked quietly, trying vainly to hide the thrill in her voice. She now shifted the magic’s pull and briefly warmed her fingers until they felt almost too hot beneath her own nails—then, she placed her entire hand over the swelling of his left shoulder, attempting to cover as much of his muscle as she could. She cursed her tiny hands.  
  
Felix, however, didn’t seem to mind their smallness, nor care. It was as if some incredible, unseen prayer had granted him a single moment without the stifling throb to his shoulder. The heat was indescribable. It flooded into his skin and seemed to settle over his muscles, through blood and bone, and somehow continued on into his chest. It felt good just to breathe.  
  
“Huh,” Felix’s languid muffled reply told her.  
  
It was nothing like what she had expected. Was there supposed to be an ‘Uh’ to that ‘huh’? Affirmative? Or was she just making it worse? Annette frowned.  
  
And Annette was talking to him, the sound sweet and gentle. Felix took another breath, somehow better than the last, and _ sighed. _ He meant to attach words to the end of it, but instead, the sound came out pure and unfiltered, a hot breath to the side of her neck. Words weren’t enough. A thank-you wasn’t enough. Felix had spent so many nights, years, attempting to just black out from his stupid body’s response to stress, and, Annette, without asking him, was slowly draining it away. It was beyond language, and talking was already becoming difficult—jabs and wit and calculating Annette’s full-neck blushes a distant world away. Words were becoming harder to form, to whittle down into something tangible and dense. But he wanted to tell her, he wanted her to know... he was so warm, and Annette...and Annette...Annette…  
  
It was as if she was fading from him, too. He felt so boneless by her touch...he could sleep here. He really, truly could. He wanted to. He wanted to lay down and...  
  
Annette made a small sound of surprise.  
  
At once, Felix’s eyes opened.  
  
Annette could tell, the sudden flickering of dark lashes tickled her neck, and Felix shifted them back up. Somewhere in that lost moment, she had felt Felix’s body fall back and she had nearly gone with him. Through the blurring of pain in his back, Felix felt her shiver, her small body perhaps the one thing holding him upright for a moment. Felix stumbled back through the warmth and the bonelessness to not simply crush the poor girl. He straightened his back and fixed his arms, loose, around her waist.  
  
“Sorry,” Felix’s voice felt his again, raspy and slow, but his own. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”  
  
“It’s okay. I’m sorry,” Annette began in a puff. “I just thought that was what you wanted. You mentioned your shoulder gets tight sometimes—and when I saw you carrying Ashe, you were favouring it.”  
  
“...I was?” Here, Felix sounded distantly confused. Annette tried to picture the cute pout on his face.  
  
“Mhm,” she hummed confidently. “Remember? It was at the feast during the Horsebow Moon, back when we were in school together? That was when you told me.”  
  
Ohh. Had Felix found the strength, he wanted to fix his palm over his face and _ die. _ Of course she’d remember.  
  
He hadn’t. He couldn’t because he had already had four glasses of Enbarr wine, because von Riegan had prodded and smirked and gotten under his skin about never joining in any of the fun, and, uncharacteristically, he had fallen for it, like a stupid fish in the monastery’s back pond Lindthart was always fishing for. He remembered that the wine was thick and far too sweet. It burned his mouth and throat over the first cup—but then another was in his hand, and then his royal beastliness was able to laugh with the rest at the table, and soon his throat and taste buds were too numb to care that he actually hate this kind of thing, the fraternizing, the indulgent drinking.  
  
Eventually, his body felt numb, too, and he sat down, uncertain if he could walk without running into another long table, or chair, or person...and he had grown bored with the others, nursing the metallic taste around the rim of his goblet...until...Damn, that’s right, _ Annette _ had arrived to the party, unfashionably late, probably due to over studying or ‘doing her best’ or some stupid...She had seen him, dumbly sitting alone, and she had turned to walk over to him, and suddenly Felix found he had swallowed the rest of his wine a little too quickly, grinning broadly at her like she was the most beautiful girl in the entire room, and, of course, she already was but now….  
  
He didn’t remember too much from that night. Just that when Annette appeared, her fair skin looked like it was glowing, an inward light that she projected all her own, moon-like, creamy and fresh, and he wanted to sink his teeth into the exposed shoulder of her dress. She had sat across the table from him, and he also remembered, vaguely, a sharp sad pang that she had chosen not to sit closer to him. Perhaps it was then he had rambled about something stupid, like his fucking messed up shoulder, and thankfully not that he wanted to lick and suck at her neck like it was one of those overly-sweet creams desserts she was always going on about, until the cream there had turned red as a strawberry...  
  
“Sorry.” Felix said again, his voice guilty. Annette had no idea why.  
  
“Honestly, Felix, I’m happy to help you. Er. To help. I mean, I’m happy to help all of my friends but, ah, um.” She traced her finger slowly, keeping the pressure light, up his neck and back down. Another soft vibration lifted from Felix, almost too imperceptible to feel, but Annette did. “Preference? Hot, cold, firm, soft?”  
  
She was up to her usual tricks, trying too hard and doing too much, but Felix just wanted to be here. Right here, with her, pain or no, but if he could choose to not be in pain…  
  
Her neck felt overly hot. It was Felix’s face, still pressed to her skin. Was he...blushing?  
  
“Uh. Hard to say.” He wavered for a moment, somewhere between concern for using her, and selfishly, overwhelmingly certain that if she did that magic again, he’d definitely pass out on her. “Maybe not too much magic, okay? Um.” Why was he saying no to the magic? He wanted the magic. He wanted it _ so _ bad. “I don’t care.”  
  
His usual answer that hide everything he couldn’t dare to say. She was so...so...perfect, honestly trying to help him, and he was an ass, unable to let her in. Saint Cethleann, why was he like this?  
  
“Um. Okay.” She dragged the back half of the word ‘okay’ in a cute, nervous tick. “I just hope it, uh, feels alright.” She strummed up some light white magic again, warm around her fingertips and palms, and kneaded over his shoulders, digging into dips and collar bone lines, around the blades, up his neck.  
  
“Feels good,” Felix murmured after a while, the words damp against her skin. His voice sounded loose and gentle, and sometimes, Annette swore, his tongue occasionally lapped at her neck, like a cat, as if falling asleep caused Felix to lose control of his sharp tongue. “You’re s’good.”  
  
Annette giggled.  
  
“When your shoulder gets tight like this, what do you usually do? Does someone else help you?” Annette couldn’t help but to wonder aloud. She wasn’t sure if Felix would answer her fully. Most of the time he sounded more able to answer simple things, like yes or no questions, which Annette allowed herself to enjoy; it was so ridiculously heart-meltingly cute.  
  
“Nn’,” he breathed. He almost shook his head, too, until he realized he was already close to her neck, and he ended up burying his nose into her warm skin. “Don’t bother.”  
  
She frowned. That made her feel so sad. “So, what, you just help everyone else but you can’t ask someone to help you?”  
  
“Mm.” He seemed to consider this for a short moment. “Can’t.”  
  
“You...don’t want people to know.” Annette completed what Felix struggled to say. Oh.  
  
Oh. It made sense. Everything now, it suddenly made sense.  
  
“And you just...suffer?”  
  
“Not if I jus’ go t’sleep.” Felix responded. His tongue, again, lapped softly at the skin of her neck in an attempt to find the words.  
  
“Oh.” Annette fluttered again, nervous, and Felix must have felt it, because he merely pushed himself against her in response.  
  
“M’ glad it’s you.” Felix practically mouthed the words against her neck, he was so entangled. The next part felt more articulated. “Your scent drives me crazy.”  
  
“My..scent?”  
  
“Your st’pid bracelet?” He prompted wearily.   
  
“No way, you’re still wearing it?” Annette dropped on hand, much to Felix’s sorry little whimper, and felt for it. Soon, she found it, cool against the warmth of his wrist. She also felt his heartbeat, gentle and slow, beating in a steady rhythm, heading towards sleep.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Annette smiled, unsure of how to take that answer. “You could have just taken it off, you know.”  
  
“You smell like roses,” Felix elaborated, the ending of the word ‘roses’ dragged out just a bit too long. She had never heard Felix stumble over his words before, not even when he had been drinking.  
  
“Um. I like roses.” She blushed, uncertain. There was more, like how her father, before he had abandoned her, had teased her red hair—but...that was a long, long time ago.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Darn it. Caught. He’d caught her, even half asleep. Annette fought for a better reason, to lie, to deflect but…  
  
“It’s because of...my dad, honestly. He called me ‘Rosie’, when I was a little girl and...well, he’s gone now, but I guess it just…” it was just a simple childhood nickname that she’d never hear again...but she could smell it. Her voice became a tight whisper. “It makes me feel better. It’s dumb, really dumb, I know.”  
  
It looked like the short conversation had ended for now. When Felix didn’t ask her further. She was fine with this. Really fine, honestly. Far too fine. She had even found herself humming a tuneless song as she moved her fingers over his back, wondering silently to herself, when Felix moved as if to speak again.  
  
“No,” Felix said suddenly, greatly delayed. Annette had finished her thought a while ago, and it was if Felix had finally realized that.  
  
No? Annette considered this fondly. No, to what? No to her feelings? No to where she had placed her hands?  
  
And then, it dawned on her. She was so stupid sometimes. He was saying no to her feeling sad, thinking it was stupid. Was he...trying to reassure her it wasn’t too silly?  
  
“Um.” Her cheeks burned. “Thanks.” She admitted in a small voice.  
  
She rubbed again at the back of his neck, flexing her fingers to fill the spaces of muscle and skin, dragging down her nails in a single direct pattern. Each and every time she did so, she felt Felix shudder against her. He was particularly sensitive about his scalp. He really was susceptible there, and it made bad, very bad, not nice ideas race through Annette’s mind, ideas that made her toes curl into the quilt under them, her own heart beat, its own pulse at the base of her thumbs…  
  
For now, she stuck to his shoulders and back, alone.  
  
And, if it weren’t for her massaging him, occasionally speeding up her pattern, or slowing down to a trickle of her fingertips trailing over his flushed skin, Annette swore, she _ swore, _ this might be considered cuddling.  
  
“Um.” Another warm, comfortable moment. Annette struggled to interpret the quiet, his breathing muted, steady and becoming a familiar pattern she could count. Felix would breathe in deep and then slowly exhale out again, steady and only getting slower by all accounts. And, with the way his slightly-open mouth kept bumping faintly against her neck, he clearly didn’t want to talk.  
  
Finally, she couldn’t stand a second more. What was this? And was this what Felix wanted...at all? It didn’t seem fair to project all of her secret desires onto him at once, here and now, in the shadowed darkness of his bedroom, where his comfort was something he had once made for himself...not something she was giving to him. She spooled her fingertips back through the loose curls in one fluid motion, a move she was hopeful would get his lingering attention back on her, guilty as she felt to edge him back from the brink of sleep.  
  
There, in the dark, just beneath her fingertips, Felix moaned.  
  
It wasn’t just a sound. It was a movement. His mouth had parted further and he moved to take a warm taste of her into his mouth, his tongue warm and damp and lingering over soft skin. It only lasted a moment, perhaps less than three heart beats, until Felix’s mouth ebbed back, loosely pressed into the crook of her shoulder once more, as if he had never moved at all.  
  
Her hand froze. She felt light-headed.  
  
Felix didn’t just _ moan. _ That couldn’t have been what she had heard. Felix didn’t make—she wasn’t sure how to say it, really, normal people sounds. Felix was—he was Felix!  
  
To her surprise, as it had worked at once, she wanted to try again, if not far stronger than before. She ran her nails over again, a light drizzle over the dark strands along the back of his head, and, again, Felix _ moaned _ against her. The sound seemed to float over the air and straight up her spine. Again, his mouth pressed against her neck, tongue dragging weakly, kitten-soft, as if an undeniable reaction of pleasure he couldn’t resist.  
  
“Fuh-Felix?” She tried not to stutter, nerves and her heart high and fluttery, like one of Marianne’s birds. She had to stop. She had to control herself. She didn’t want to think it was something Felix meant to do to her. Perhaps it was sincerely involuntary, like a stretching in sleep, an unconscious pull that his mouth did on its own, because it was certainly true that Felix’s mouth did have a mind of its own. “Do you want me to go now? It’s—it’s been a while, and I know you—”  
  
“Never.” Annette felt frozen in place. Her heart skipped a single beat. She could feel Felix’s mouth, warm and barely open against her skin as he struggled to keep his thought. “All ‘he times... I ever wanted you...t’ leave.” His voice was honey-slow, the thick gooey kind she often smeared on her toast during morning breakfast, the kind Felix pointedly told her he couldn’t stomach. “‘Never real’y wanted you...t’leave.” His words lilted in some defenseless way that felt impossible to be coming from Felix. He was never slow. He was never this soft.  
  
Another moment whispered by, then another, but Annette didn’t care. It was only when she pushed her thumbs, this time with slightly more pressure, against the back of his scalp, and again, Felix’s breathing hitched, his exhale a low, desperate moan of relief. He somehow moved his head closer to her neck, the space already small and dark, perfectly designed for him.  
  
She giggled. She couldn’t help it. Girlish as it was, she felt deserved to hear it.  
  
She slowly evened her hands, the pattern rarely deviating from her first, soft, then harder, firmer presses into the middle, and, finally, his lower back. She even allowed her fingertips to dip just below the waist of his trousers, the pads of her fingers digging into the cute, circle-like grooves, two perfect dimples that rested at the lowest part of his lower back. He seemed to really like that part the most, his mouth, so close to her throat, allowing Annette to feel the throaty, whispering purr coaxed from his quiet, pleasurable sounds. Felix rarely moved now, the weight of his upper body now resting heavily back onto Annette. But, occasionally, he said words, mainly just little affirmatives, like “there”, or “yes”, the words slurred against Annette’s neck. Those small words, those tiny, breathless whispers; Annette could now die at war a happy woman.

* * *

  
Finally, once her own hands had started to ache, and her legs felt numb, did Annette realize that the dream had to come to an end. But she didn’t want it to. She really, really didn’t want it to.  
  
“Hmm,” she placed her mouth gently against Felix’s ear, careful to keep her voice as quiet as possible. “Honey, do you want to lie down?” She hoped he wouldn’t mind the pet name.  
  
It took a moment, and another mild shake of Felix’s shirt-collar, before his dark eyes drifted open, the darkness of his dilated pupils nearly overtaking the natural dark in his eye. “‘’ette?”  
  
“Mhm. It’s just me.” She gave a small tug at his shirt collar to rouse him just a bit more. “You wanna lay down?”  
  
“Huh,” Felix said again. This time, Annette had become aware of this cute little sound to mean a very tired, very happy, very bleary, ‘yes’.  
  
Careful to gather her legs off of him without much fuss, Annette laid down beside Felix, helping to ease him back onto the mattress. She was pretty sure he was asleep before his head even hit the pillow. It was only when she went to get up that she realized one of Felix’s arms snaked around her hips, turning her into a make-shift teddy-bear, and well, she wasn’t one to deny Felix anything.  
  
It had only taken five years to snuggle next to Felix, and she could only hope for many, many more to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An: I heavily, heavily debated writing a sex scene, but for now i wanted soft annette/felix. There just isn’t enough softness out there these days. But, anyways, please let me know what you think, and also please stay tuned for a part two, where smut is abound, ;)
> 
> I also wanted to let you guys know that I am TOTALLY down to accept requests and suggestions, whatever you guys might want, if you enjoy my writing style C 
> 
> Ayy, thanks for reading an insane long slow burned pace massage/snuggle fic, yoooo, you’re a sweet soft person and I really like readers like you
> 
> if you feel so inclined, hit me up on twitter @OhKay58936663 where my twitter handle name is almost as garbage as I am!


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ' "Don't. Get. Confused." Felix made sure to emphasize each word, dark and promising. It was perhaps one last connection shared between them: a promise of violence. “Or you won't have to worry about that wretched head of yours anymore." '
> 
> or, alternatively for the annette/felix fan's: 
> 
> "“Make your move then,” his teeth flashed in a white, snide smile. “You gonna prove it to me, kitty-cat?”"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An: fandom fam, I don’t know what even HAPPENED to your poor writer during this chapter, it was like all of these scenes came pouring out of me and I just couldn’t stop, so if you’re a little scared why this chapter is so damn long, it’s because I’m absolutely insane and can’t shut up, please forgive meeeeeee.
> 
> Anyway, You are the sweetest, most kind readers I’ve had in a long time, and I am so grateful to every comment and every kudos. It sincerely has lifted my spirits. 
> 
> I also wanted to let you guys know that I am TOTALLY down to accept requests and suggestions, whatever you guys might want, if you enjoy my writing style C : 
> 
> Anyways, here is part 2, as I promised, we have thegoodporn, and if you’re just here for the Annie/Felix vibe, you’ll find that on page 38, but, per usual, I am a shy writer, and in order to build myself into getting into sex scenes, I decided to move forward into expanding my previous subplots from chapter one, and so the slow burn, massage fic continues in a different direction.
> 
> Also, i fucking screwed up and I worried that my Mercedes is a little off beat, BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT she deserved to be fleshed out too, oh wellll, I swore to myself that there was a support rank between them where Mercedes basically tells Sylvain that she greatly disliked him until he chose to be more earnest with his feelings, and I remember being like that’s so SAVAGE of her, so I ran HARD with that, only to turn back around and realize it doesn’t...exist…?
> 
> Uh. Alternative-head canon, anyone? 
> 
> But be warned; this chapter is not nearly as soft as the first: 
> 
> In here, there be monsters.

* * *

  
_ "Don't. Get. Confused." Felix made sure to emphasize each word, dark and promising. It was perhaps one last connection shared between them: a promise of violence. “Or you won't have to worry about that wretched head of yours anymore." _ _  
_

* * *

The golden light of morning didn't so much gently awaken Felix as much as it had startled him awake. He heard the birds first; those annoying kind, loud and cheerful, probably the fat white ones Marianne was often seen staring at in the south garden. Felix jerked upright. 

His room was a bright white blur around him. He felt confused by the light suddenly dancing inside of his pupils and the fact that he never, _ ever, _ slept in after dawn. He struggled to pull himself together. But he already had on his clothes and sheets weren’t that all moved about and his boot laces were still knotted together. Felix felt dimly to the space beside him. His heart felt anxious for a tight moment, unwoven and raw. His hands didn’t find another warm body. His hands couldn’t find her. He froze for a moment. Then, he conceded to the truth before he dropped his head down to confirm his suspicion. There wasn’t a crumpled lump in his bed.  
  
She wasn’t here. She didn’t stay.  
  
Annette. She was gone.  
  
Just gone.  
  
But still, she lingered. Her scent, like faint roses all over the stale air of the room. It whirled in the soft light. It clung to everything, hung over his pillow, into his skin. But she wasn’t here. With a quick look over the rug, neither were her slippers. Felix turned to stare out of the window. His room wasn’t much for a view, and time hadn’t been kind to it, but the old glass looked wet with dew and muggy with summer heat. He could sense the hot eye of the sun pooling upwards, rising, climbing over the tall trellises of the gardens. It really was morning, perhaps maybe one or, dare he actually be so late, two whole hours past dawn.  
  
He looked back to his bed, unable to move.  
  
Annette. Had she gone back to her own room? Was she already up and about, perhaps moving about the abbey or giggling with Mercedes outdoors at the barracks, complaining loudly about how Linhardt never hung up any of the uniforms correctly?  
  
But…what if she had left because he did something...untoward?  
  
His hands fled to over his face. Felix had to bite back a groan. A thousand self-conscious thoughts pecked at Felix’s newly awoken mind: had he snored? Why did she leave? Did she try to wake him up and he didn’t even move? Why did she leave? What did he say last night? Was it too much, too fast? He’d had never talked to anyone that way before; he’d never fallen asleep being held before. He should have kissed her. A real one; why didn’t he kiss her? _ Why did she leave? _ _  
_  
Also…morning light? He was fixing the quilt and pillows back into place, eyeing the new dampened glow from his room’s only window. It was morning. Was it really _ that _ late in the morning? Argh. The Pegasuses weren’t watered yet and they’d be pissed. The garden gates weren’t all locked. The south tower, with its shattered glass windows, needed to be hauled out, weapons ordered, and what was he doing? Sleeping? Like a lazy, intolerable—  
  
He sighed, threw off his slept-in undershirt and pulled on a new one, lest he really look like he thought his time was more important than that of the monastery. He pawed faintly at the rest of his rumpled clothes. Didn’t he change last night? Why did he sleep in his…?  
  
Annette.  
  
He turned, looked back at the space in his bed that she had once taken, and let out a short sigh. He didn’t even have time to see her in the way he had always wanted; the way she might look while she was asleep, and how she’d probably still look like an annoyed kitten, a slight noise away from those eyes snapping open to drown him in their blue. Had he understood the long winded, heavy handed, complicated passages of one of Lorenz’s poems, Felix would say that her eyes must look something like the sea. He frowned at the idea. It made him uncomfortable to compare Annette to a place he wasn’t particularly fond of, the professor’s good intentions of strength training in the sand or not.  
  
But Goddess, they were so _ blue, _ and it was striking, as they always had been, and had only known the dark stare of his own reflection for so long, he would have liked to imagine she saw the world better than he did, somehow bigger, somehow...better...  
  
They were so blue. He wanted to tell her that he’d felt almost frightened to wake up with her gone, with everything that the night before had felt between them, and with Dimitri still skulking about.  
  
Damn. Dimitri. He’d have to go see him first.  
  
Last time Felix had altered his scouting routine, Dimitri far from his thoughts, things went...bloody.  
  
Dimitri, in some sick, forward thinking way, had decided to move the bulk of the iron trebuchets himself from down the valley—without any sense of leather gloves to pad the meat of his hands. Thusly, it led Hilda, her long curling hair streaming behind her, axe-clad in her still soapy hands, into the girl’s privy, screaming at the top of her already overly obnoxious lungs, that she’d _found bloodied hand-prints all over the bath house's walls, and that someone had obviously been murdered there and dragged off, and she’d kill the man herself for daring to try and take Ingrid during her bath! _ _  
_  
The horrible way Dimitri’s hands shook that evening, littered in thick wooden splinters, patterning thick gashes of sawed off skin, raw and gaping. Dimitri’s blood-drained face, chalk white from pressure of so many eyes peering at him, questions and fingers pointing to hold the blame of someone not watching him more closely, why he had went into the women's bathroom and not the men’s, if he had touched Ingrid, and, of course, the pain, as if he couldn’t understand where his plan had gone wrong…the way he had screamed when Manuela tried to bandage the wounds, like a man already dying…  
  
Felix moved through the memory as if it had physically separated from him. He couldn’t linger long in those kinds of thoughts. Somehow, as if waiting for the crowd and sounds to part from Felix, Glenn’s skull-like scowl remained, grinning tightly at him in some displeased way.  
  
His fingers clenched. _ Annette. _ The plan was to go and see her, and that was that.  
  
He’d have to see her tonight, somehow, someway. He’d figure it out. He’d—He’d talk her into it, somehow, and she’d finally stop for once, doing whatever, everything he guessed, at full speed, and then, _ then _ she couldn’t just up and _ leave _ him _ . _ It—it was. His hand, again, touched at his own face, but he couldn’t finish the rest of the thought. It was...impossible to really describe. Anger, frustration, those feelings felt like siblings to him. But what Annette did to him. He stared at the bed and waiting for the rest of his answer but it never found him. He just...really wanted her back. It was simple and it was honest. He felt foolish. But he had rather thought she wouldn’t leave him before dawn like this. They’d only spent one night together, if he even had the nerve to imply that last night had meant something important to her, and it made Felix feel...vulnerable to not have her near.  
  
Alright. Enough of that.  
  
Felix pulled open his door and quickly locked it behind him without looking back.

* * *

Automatically, Felix walked, boots crushing through the gravel and broken stones beneath his heels. Everything before him looked fairly normal, and he took a moment’s comfort to think his lateness hadn’t caused a complete and total disaster. Still, it wasn’t much to work with.  
  
His head still felt too rattled by the evening before, of Glenn and Ashe, of Dimitri's unpredictable violence, and if, like fool cut from the same belligerent cloth as Sylvain, the distraction of Annette would eventually cause something inside of Felix to slip. What if he had forgotten something about his usual morning routine? What if Dimitri had awoken, torn and angry, and had hunted once more? What if he had remembered Ashe, and, in his confusion, his paranoia, sought to find the boy and...and, Goddess, he felt like an overprotective fool. What was he thinking, leaping to the worst of all conclusions? 

By all accounts, he could only control so much. 

But his fists tightened, bone into bone, and he told himself that he could not control Dimitri once more. He wasn't an idiot. But he wasn't so trusting, either. Dimitri was not going to be instantly better, as if baptized into the forgiveness of Sothis herself. He needed time; time the army didn't have. Time Edelgard was using against them. 

Time that he and Annette, perhaps even they didn't have. And what of Annette now? Was she helping in the gardens or still dosing in her dorm? When could he bring his plan into action? What if he had become so distracted within distraction, he'd miss his next moment with her? Would that be it? A slip up and she'd be gone from him? He hadn't even gotten to thank her properly. He hadn't even gotten to kiss those cute pouty lips of hers. 

Ugh. That thought wasn't important. Keeping his friends safe, that, that was important. 

By the time his internal argument had worked itself out Felix's feet had carried him, by no small habit alone, back to Dimitri's door. A small cough caught Felix's attention. A nun. She was peering at Felix quite intently from under her habit. Remembering some sense of manners, Felix greeted her openly.

"Morning, Sister." 

"It is a good morning, isn't it, Master Fraldarius?" 

Now, that was a bit much. "Is that so?" 

"Why yes. It has been a quiet morning in the chapel, and, well, I couldn't help myself. I just had to see if the rumors were true." 

A small fear flickered, flame-like, held to the back of Felix's neck. Sweat gathered, betraying him. Had he been seen the night before, cradling Ashe? Or...his neck snapped to Dimitri's door, his dark eyes searching in thinly withheld panic. What had happened? What had gone wrong since he had spent the night with Annette? Had someone tried to wake him this morning and he had been too deeply asleep to move? 

"What rumor, Sister?" 

"Why, of our prince. I was told he did not walk the grounds at all last night, and, by the grace of Saint Cichol, I was told he was spotted conversing with fair Miss von Martrtiz just a moment ago." 

Felix was certainly glad he had been standing up already, as if felt had he been sitting down, he wouldn't have been able to stand. "...Dimitri? Speaking with Mercedes?" 

His heart, once full, too full, felt pricked. It felt like it was draining, as the blood from his face, and in its place, a thick, muddy fear crawled into the space. The dark bruise as his hip seemed to pulse, breathless, as if re-struck.

"Where are they?" 

Again, the nun nodded, her eyes light. She raised a finger to the highest arc of the main garden, where yellow-faced sunflowers had turned, wet with dew, to face the rising sun. Felix nodded at her in a short way, restless to already run to intervene in Mercedes's overwrought, far too trusting, insanely stupid plan to stand near the boar prince.  
  
That plan was never supposed to happen. At least, Felix panicked, not in this way. Not without Felix able to monitor the exchange. It was beyond kind for Mercedes to care for Dimitri in one of the more intimate of ways, and Goddess did he reek. Goddess did he need to be bathed, in ways that no one else could breach, that Dimitri couldn’t pathetically manage for himself. It was a single step towards ending the cycle of blood and exhaustion, and Felix was grateful for that chance. But that was exactly what it was.  
  
A chance.  
  
And, sleep or no sleep, intentional or mistake, if that putrid monster had even an ounce of humanity left within him, he’d turn right around and drag himself back into the dark from whence he came, belonged even, and if he couldn’t manage even that, if Dimitri had any inkling of hurting that girl, Felix swore, he _ swore _ into a toneless piercing ring that ached his ears, _ he'd fucking kill that animal for good. _

"Thank you, Sister." Felix huffed, already pulling away from her using the full force of his legs.  
  
He skirted around the iron gated door and, in misdirection and reckless timing, nearly took down another person, twisting around in his sword footwork to avoid a gardener before he finally saw Mercedes, standing along the iron gates.

"Mercedes." Felix greeted minimally. He kept his eyes tight to her face, weakly holding back telling her _ exactly _how stupid she was for getting so close to Dimitri without any real help standing near by. But of course, this was Mercedes that Felix was close to yelling at, and it seemed to drain the growl from his voice. Mercedes was just so...naturally oblivious, with her tender, open smile and her light blue eyes twinkling with unending eagerness to give. It wasn’t her fault that she enjoyed conversing with wolves. "How are you?"

"Felix," her sugary voice always made Felix feel calmer, even if just for a moment. During the heat of battle, Mercedes out of all voices always felt the clearest, as if her devout belief in the Goddess made the wind bend to her power. “What a pleasure it is to see you this morning. Annie told me you might come to me today. I find it uncanny to see it come true so soon. Are you well?”   
  
She closed her eyes, too, and hummed happily at him, and Felix felt himself involuntarily flush. That look on her face—it was delicately...ingenious, as if she knew of last night, as if he had walked straight out of the door and it was written all over his face. “You look quite well.”  
  
She was a tall woman. Her legs were long and she had a graceful curve to her entire body, like her maturity was both a physical property all her own, inside and out. Her long thick hair had been cut short about her ears, and while Hilda had complained of missing its length to toil into braids, it suited her very well. She was dressed down for the morning, her usual doll-like layers gone, revealing her brown field-boots that looked damaged and worn, perhaps from years of hard walking and work. It was no secret that Mercedes’s wayward life was not that of usually luxury to one borne with a Crest. Although, Felix would have never guessed that in a million years.  
  
There was a way Mercedes held herself as if perfectly content with the world in its timing and the flow of its turning, war, no war, peace, gravity, it was all the same. She was still and calm, somehow softer than silk, more delicate than a plucked flower petal, but she could bring white magic down over a man’s head and he’d perhaps go to the grave having never really known he had died, peaceful and returned to the earth. It was just as well. She was merciful and kind, and Felix always felt a little lesser just to talk to her, a little misunderstood in his long unscrutinized jealousy of close friendship between Annette and Mercedes; they had been so close for so long, and they never fought.  
  
Felix couldn’t remember a time he and Dimitri weren’t standing deliberately far apart in a crowded room, faces turned away, unsure of how to handle eye contact. He couldn’t recall the last time Sylvain had held a conversation that didn’t end in insults and Felix, tired and cold, ending the conversation by just walking away without looking back to see the hurt settle into the laugh lines of Sylvain’s face.  
  
Felix was holding Mercedes very intense gaze, clear and direct. “Felix?”  
  
Felix tried again correcting his thoughts, twisted again at the roots of his heart. “Has Dimitri spoken with you?”

She blinked at Felix in a graceful flounce of confusion. "Dimitri? With me? No, not at all."  
  
“Have you seen him?”  
  
“I believe I saw him earlier, over in the garden.” She tapped a long finger to her chin as she recalled the thought. “He wasn’t wearing his greatcoat, and I remember that I found that odd. I suppose it is far too hot, even for him. It makes me wonder if he remembers... what I had asked of him…”

She turned to look over to the east garden gate, and the morning sun warmed the delicate, blue veins across her porcelain skin in the yellow-toned light. It was as if she was designed to be this delicate. Her physical skills within the professor’s army had its limits. It made Felix feel all the more angry. At least as small as Annette looked, _ she _ didn’t attempt to befriend Dimitri.  
  
But Mercedes. She would be far harder to shake.  
  
“Yes. I have my doubts he would, but I cannot help but wonder if he is,” Felix struggled to find the proper words. The whole affair sounded like a deadly plan, but if he had some sense of control over it, he could play along. “I don’t know. Wanting relief from the sun would be something he would understand, I’m sure.”  
  
“Perhaps today might be the day, then.” Even her blinks looked graceful. She didn’t seem upset at the idea of taking care of a monster, because of course she wouldn’t be, and it only made Felix the more annoyed. Dimitri didn’t deserve that kind of care if his response was unstable, unearned violence.  
  
“If I could confirm with Dimitri that he was looking for you, Mercedes,” Felix replied, his voice clipped, uncertain of what he wanted from the exchange. “Would you wish to know his answer?”

She remained quiet for a moment. Then, she gave a stern nod. “If he wished to speak with me?” Her light eyes had turned deep and mournful. “I....I haven't heard His Grace’s voice in a very long time."  
  
Felix swallowed his honest reply to tell her that Dimitri hardly used words anymore and that she shouldn’t get too hopeful, but this was a strange, strained, unsure dance to get this plan to even work, and so he said nothing to that effect. “I was heading to go and find him. I’ll be back shortly.”  
  
Mercedes nodded again, her short hair fluttering with the movement. “Certainly. I’ll wait here.”   
  
“Until then,” Felix used as a goodbye, and he turned towards the garden, attempting to capture a moment of patience Mercedes had had for him. While the rumor-mill often held no water, some words did remain true. There, lingering a short distance away, Felix spotted Dimitri. In the morning heat, Felix had no trouble smelling the sour scent of his armor and hair, and he, too, took notice that he, indeed, was without greatcoat nor the burdenous rest of his padded armor.  
  
In fact, to see Dimitri, sitting so normally along a stone bench, stirred a half-shared memory: this very spot, years ago, from the garden, when the Horsebow Moon hung high in the peppered sky and a party was winding down, but Felix had found Dimitri staring up into the stars, a forgotten cup of wine poured out into the grasses, resting just off in the distance. As if he had recklessly throw the cup in an emotional fit of anger, or joy. Felix had approached gracelessly, a little drunk himself, but curious to what could be so interesting about the night sky.  
  
“Felix.” Dimitri hadn’t even turned to look at him. Had he once known his friend’s footsteps through childhood memory alone? “Do you think about destiny at all?”  
  
“No.” Felix had returned. “Not even a little. Why are you out here alone?”  
  
“I just think I’ve realized something tonight, about my destiny, about the way I feel about her.”  
  
“About who?”  
  
And then, the boar prince threw his head back into a peal of laughter. “Perhaps this a conversation beyond just us, my friend.”  
  
Felix found himself spitefully grinning. “Oh. Too stupid to understand, am I?”  
  
“Not at all,” Dimitri replied easily. Perhaps it was the drink that had shifted something new inside, how easily they were speaking to one another. “I just—I just know Sylvain would laugh at me, quite a bit. He’d already said he knew I loved her before I knew I loved her.”  
  
Here, Felix had gave a laugh himself, low on the night air. “D’you want Sylvain out here, loud, ruining the night? Look, the stars don’t even want that.”  
  
Again, Dimitri laughed, the sound clear and distinct, like falling rain. “Perhaps you’re right.”  
  
And then, Felix wasn’t too sure what had happened next. If they went back inside the hall or walked the forest together, unspeaking. Dimitri never did clarify who he was talking about. And Felix had long forgotten the conversation, shoved under layers of dust and resentment and disdain.  
  
And then, the memory faded, like a slow drop of paint along a canvas. They were two entirely different men rendered in completely different colors: the red of Dimitri’s sleepless eyes, the oily black of Felix’s hair, the grey formless unanswered questions between them. Only the garden seemed unchanged, vibrant in peeling orange light. Felix continued forward, ignoring the odor, and spoke as directly as he could to Dimitri.

"Dimitri. I see you’re someplace new. This is the gardens, in case you’re forgotten what flowers and greens look like.” He dropped the sarcasm. “Have you eaten?"  
  
He didn’t expect to collect Dimitri’s attention by any means, but then again, he didn’t expect for Dimitri to be staring so openly from the direction Felix had walked. He turned, leveled his own stare, and realized that, just through the gate’s spacing, he could see Mercedes' tall form. She had hands clasped together, as if praying quietly to herself.  
  
“Are you waiting for something?”

Again, nothing.  
  
"Are you looking at her?" He couldn't help but allow his voice to turn icy, to drip with annoyance and frustration, over how Dimitri had literally done nothing wrong at all, and still, his anger fumed. "Not that you’d remember how rude that is. Do you even remember her name?" 

Slowly, Dimitri honestly turned to stare at Felix. His face looked mildly aware, like the way Dimitri could bring himself to look in front of the professor, nodding along to a battle plan. But he did not speak. 

Felix rolled his eyes. "Her name is Mercedes." He looked back over to her blurred fleeting form just near the garden’s wall, her frame haloed by the dawn. "Mer-say_-_des," Felix repeated again, this time far slower for Dimitri. He had to halt his tongue from rolling over the the hard 'r' within the beginning of her name, stopping the curve it into a low purr. It was a bad habit, a habit from too long ago, when his idiot father had continued the family’s accent to uphold nobility through proper use of the emphatic speech. 

"Mer.." Dimitri's rough voice began. His lips look chapped and dry. “M…”  
  
Felix did not have the patience for this. “Do you wish to speak with her? Do you remember at all what she said to you?”  
  
A dry tongue reached out from Dimitri’s mouth to wet his own lips. “My...hair.”  
  
Felix raised his eyebrows. “Yes. And what else?”  
  
Dimitri’s eyes closed quickly. His expression looked pained. “Her name. I know her name.”  
  
Ah, they had done this bit before. “Because I just told you her name. Can you even say it properly?”  
  
“Mercedes,” Dimitri replied. It was more a mumble than pure word, but Felix felt it was close enough.  
  
“Yes, that is her name. And I'm serious about how horrible you smell. Do you wish to speak with her?”   
  
Without warning, Dimitri stood. It was almost a blur of limbs, too fast, and Felix could not help how he reacted.  
  
At once, without warning, Felix took back the edge of the movement into his own hands. He grasped hard at the worn collar of Dimitri’s shirt, dragging the man upwards, half-choking him, to hold Dimitri’s ear close to Felix's low, threatening growl.  
  
_ "Don't. Get. Confused." _Felix made sure to emphasize each word, dark and promising. It was perhaps one last connection shared between them: a promise of violence. “Or you won't have to worry about that wretched head of yours anymore." 

Felix then let go, watching Dimitri rock back on his heels from the force of his grip suddenly relinquished. A few gardeners had turned their necks quickly to stare into the direction of a loud voice over the quiet morning. In the open like this, it seemed too easy to think Felix had the upper hand, the bully in the school yard to push a sick prince around. 

Those ignorant eyes were dead wrong. It just took a second of not paying attention, and Dimitri would coil back into the darkened grimace, tempted to break anything that moved, including his own bones. 

But then, for a small delicate heartbeat, Felix felt it; the rush of self-hatred like a sword stab through his chest. That look of shock across Dimitri's face, to be grabbed and tossed away. His fingers twitched at his side. Perhaps a better night’s sleep had revived something long buried. A long ingrained reflex that flared in the back of his brain, a childhood memory, of reaching for Dimitri when it looked as if he was about to fall. 

"Dimitri. Do you remember my name?" 

Dimitri's eyes fell to the ground beneath them, crushed into the stone. 

The moment then passed. In its place, Felix merely felt cold. "Do you wish to speak with her?" 

"Merce..des." Dimitri mumbled. 

"Yes. Her." 

He forced his pale eyelids together to as if working on building the word for himself. "I...yes." 

Felix considered this carefully. "Finally can't stand being as disgusting as you are?"

Another weak whisper, but for once, it replied to the question that had come before it. "Yes."

"All right, then go to her. Tell her what she wants to hear." Felix returned coldly. "You were always good at that." 

"...How?" 

Felix glanced down at Dimitri's face. A wave of anxiety, like sweat, quietly changed his usual blank stare into one of fear. Felix's heart twisted again, at war with itself. He now held the power to move this day along. He just wished he had the power to see how it might end.  
  
“Walk up to her and tell her that you wish to have your hair washed.” Felix hated this. He lacked all of the sensible, mature grace of Ashe. Talking to Dimitri as if he was a child edged Felix to the bitter cliff of nausea. “She’ll take it all from there. That’s really all you need to do.”  
  
If this advice helped the prince at all, he didn’t show it. He just continued his stare. Then, once more, Dimitri moved.  
  
Felix did not move with him.  
  
Dimitri continued forward. The sun made him feel sick to his stomach, somewhere between a near painful thirst and wanting to vomit. Still, he pushed forward. He felt eyes on him. Too many eyes, and too many voices that seemed to come from all over the grounds. He turned back.  
  
The man before him stared back, dark and waiting. The distance was too far to ask again for the words to tell that woman in the garden that he wanted, what he really wanted, and he somehow knew that the man would be angry with him for asking once more.  
  
…To tell _ Mercedes, _ yes, her name, Dimitri would cling to that name, it had made something uncoil from the relentless tightness in his chest, something with wings and the ability to fly, some golden fantastic light that seemed to guide him away from where he was, and yet, he felt himself shaking right down to his fingertips. It was too much. It was as if the Goddess herself had split the veil between the Eternal Flame and the spirit world, the woman looked so righteous and pure.  
  
It hurt him; it hurt Dimitri to look at her.  
  
Why did he even try? He had already lost one eye to sin and ruin. He deserved to be blind, he would choose to be wholly blind if he meant reprieve; reprieve from the screaming inside of his head, the whispering of the damned for him to finally join him. Would walking towards her mean the ending of all endings? Was she someone to trust? Didn’t he know her...hadn’t he seen her so many times before…  
  
...How _ bright _ she looked, as if chosen by the Goddess herself...  
  
He closed his eyes and resisted the rolling of his stomach. 

"Dimitri." the man’s voice sounded from close behind, a dark whisper, louder than the rest. "Don't forget what I said." 

Dimitri slowed to a stop and, upon turning, he slowly looked around. 

The man was gone.

* * *

Mercedes tried her best to stand very, very still.  
  
Dimitri was standing before her looking at once just as he had when she had first known him. The blue of his eye and his thick blond hair, the unsure rod-straight gait, and, of course, the small, endearing look of confusion over his pale features.  
  
And yet, it was not so. Dimitri was not here before her but someone within the crown prince’s skin, who looked as if they might faint if forced to stand a moment more. Someone who was in so much pain, yearning and wanting, without the words to tell her so. Either man, Mercedes felt, was welcome before her.  
  
“Your Highness,” Mercedes bent her head ever so gracefully to meet the prince. “I was hoping to see you today.”  
  
He did not move. He slowly blinked at her. the peerless staring of his one eye, as if unsure if she was real before him. “Mer..cedes.”  
  
Her light eyes looked as clear as rushing water. It made his throat ache. Dimitri held his hands tight to his sides.  
  
“Yes, Your Grace?”  
  
His mouth opened slowly. She waited. She felt as if she had waited so very long to finally see him standing once again before her. They had time. No believed her when she said it would be so. But they had so much time, much more, and then some, once the war was finally over.  
  
“I...Your hands.” He blinked hard, clearly upset with himself. “No, I mean. Please.” He then ducked his head low, far lower than she had when she had bowed. “I wish...for my hair to be clean.” It was only in the subtle shaking of his shoulders, did Mercedes realize Dimitri was nervous to speak to her. “Please. If you don’t..if you aren’t…”  
  
Mercedes met his wish at once. “I would be happy to help, Your Grace.”  
  
He lifted his head. He looked far better. “You will?”  
  
“Of course.” Mercedes carefully reached toward to grasp his hand. And, within Dimitri’s chest, he felt that flicker of something dim alight warmly, a match, a spark, that was falling into a dark well. “Shall we go now?”  
  
She smiled, and Dimitri felt all of his scarcely collected words fall from his head, everything the dark shadow had told him to mind, erased. His mind felt completely blank. Her mouth moved, and again, she smiled, her eyes clear like a river, and a colorful memory living was within them: he had once hunted fish with the edge of a jeweled dagger and his father had told him he’d done a great job aiming for the fish.  
  
Mercedes gave a small guiding tug once she had captured Dimitri’s hand, and soon, she had led him back towards the bath house. She stalled near the choice between entering into the women’s or men’s ward, but ultimately chose the women’s, satisfied that the high wooden walls of the open room would make Dimitri feel less uncomfortable.  
  
The sun soon dimmed and disappeared as they walked into a cool, covered place. The tightening of his insides loosened ever so slightly, and even the ground before them seemed to sink and thicken into sand, covered in the bare footprints of many others before them. Dimitri tried to remind himself of where he was, what he was doing, but the pure relief of not being beaten by the sun was a potent sedation into going back towards the faint whispering, always lingering just behind him.  
  
Suddenly, his hand felt squeezed. The warm flesh of her hand pressed into his clammy skin. He blinked, feeling his lashes brush against her skin. He had stumbled into her shoulder as Mercedes turned back towards him. She had been speaking softly, and all the more relieving, quite slowly, to him, and the voices faded away.  
  
“Am I moving too fast, Your Grace?” Mercedes’s voice felt equally cool, a new gift away from the sun and the voices. “You seem unsure. We can stop here.”  
  
Dimitri shook his head carefully. Mercedes...he could remember her at the edges of his mind. She was a kind, soft-spoken girl that had lived a hard life. She bore a crest. Her mother had remarried, and, upon the birth of a true-borne little brother, she was sent away to live at the church.  
  
She was devout, and she believed in wrath of the Eternal Flame. And so, she understood.  
  
She understood more than anyone that this was all temporary, and soon, he would be dead, and that, if perhaps she was blessed by Saint Cethleann to be kind to him, it would balance out in due time with pain, but he was a useless, selfish, monstrous thing, and in the damp room of the bath house, he wanted nothing more than to feel her touch him again.  
  
“I would feel more comfortable, Your Grace, if you would use your voice to tell me. The light is very poor here. I fear I might misunderstand.”  
  
Dimitri shook his head but added a coarse: “Thank you.”  
  
Yes. That was the very phrase. He was so grateful to her. The very definition of a sinner brought before confessional. She was holy and he was soulless and soon, he would be dead. Perhaps, for a moment, he might be allowed to look into that world to where his father and step-mother had flown.  
  
Again, her clear, warm smile. “You are so very welcome, D—” She stuttered, and Dimitri felt his heart give an uneven skip that made the shadows swim for a moment. “Your Grace,” she amended. “Forgive me.”  
  
As they moved towards the bathing stalls, Mercedes felt a heavy intake of air come from Dimitri, as if he was running out of breath. She turned back to face him, and the poor man, he looked all the more pale. The dirt about his neck and hair had left very distinct trails from where sweat, and perhaps tears, had traveled down his cheeks.  
  
She moved her hand, cupped to his forehead. “You feel very warm. Do you feel ill?”  
  
“No,” He urged the word through his lips. It was a lie. His stomach continued to roll. But Mercedes’s hands felt better than water, better than air.  
  
“Very well. Please, tell me if you feel feverish.”  
  
“I often feel,” Dimitri added thinly, “very cold.”  
  
“Hm,” she hummed softly at him. “Perhaps once we are outside again, you will feel warmer?”  
  
Feverish. Unwell. Sick. He was not deaf. He had heard those words tossed uselessly at him time and time again, for four long months since the professor had returned from the dead, and yet Dimitri was uncertain. How could he be able to move and breath and kill and be sick? It could not be so. Someone already dead could not feel ill. They could not have a fever. The ghosts that treaded to him often told Dimitri he should not drink in fear of poison, should not eat in fear of rot and disease.  
  
Mercedes stopped again, and only then did Dimitri feel himself stop as well. He had been lost in trying to remember a similarity to the room, the walls, but he only felt a twinge of uncertainty, particularly at Mercedes’s ease. Often, people spoke to him and they spoke too quickly. Often, people came to him and they were soon gone before he felt he could speak. But she was steady and very, very deliberate, as with the way she walked, concentrated and almost-dream like.  
  
“All right, Your Grace. We have arrived.”  
  
She moved to look upon the ceiling, at the way the morning’s glow was peeking through the small, time-cracked holes through the high fence, but the shady of the grove trees overcast the sandy-flooring in leave-shaped shadows. It was perfect for a confessional, Dimitri felt, as she seemed to dance between the lovely pauses of yellow light and grey shadow, pleasant and calming.  
  
She moved him further into the room where only a few objects lay scattered about the sandy flooring. A tree stump sat at its center, smoothed flat and wide. Near the stump, Dimitri watched Mercedes move with unnatural grace to collect a wooden bucket, comb, and small cloth.  
  
She carefully laid out the objects into the sand, and then, she offered her outstretched hand once more to him.  
  
...The light had caught her hair from behind, and she seemed lost to time. She had stood before a well-lit room before, with loud voices and music, and she had stood, offering her hand to him as she had years before, egged on by her cute red-headed friend whose name Dimitri could not recall, but Mercedes...Mercedes, yes, he remembered her…  
  
And how he denied her offer to dance.  
  
How perfectly well she had hidden her disappointment. A humble, petite grace across the lips of a woman that had always _ been denied every beautiful thing she had so deserved; _ and how Dimitri had practically fled from the room, heart squeezed between his teeth, terrified and unsure and positively sick to his stomach at just how absolutely beautiful she had looked, and his stupid mouth _ had told her no. _  
  
Dimitri blinked at her, his mouth slightly jarred. _ He’d seen this before. _ Yes, yes, he knew this place. He knew her, he knew this girl, this sweet girl with her delicate hands that could mend all the silly things his hands couldn’t help but to break.  
  
“I’ve been told I am tall, Your Grace,” her soft voice had pulled Dimitri back to look at her. “But I believe you should sit down so I may reach your hair.”  
  
“Mercedes,” Dimitri’s voice sounded far stronger. Mercedes felt her heart lighten. She was so worried that even the walk to get to the bath house had been too straining, but the way he moved towards her, he raised his hand, and when their fingers connected, she tried not to blush, for it was not appropriate, and it would never be so, and time had set her on a new path.  
  
She had so much love in her life. She could see new love, too, rich and deserving love, as with the way Felix had looked at her sweet Annette and Mercedes filled with delight to think her Annie could capture someone as shy as Felix Fraldarius, how it had filled her with so much happiness she felt her lungs might burst.  
  
And, different love, like how she had studied Dimitri’s empty face, lost upon the dais, somber and aching, and heart wrenching _ human. _ She knew the terrible secrets Dimitri whispered to himself when he thought himself alone. He was not the only one who thought themselves lonely, or undeserving of love, or perhaps, even questioning of their very faith.  
  
A question of faith. As if Mercedes’s own reality was running through her hands like water. It was everything she had ever known. It was everything she had ever believed in. And she did believe in it. But, she was not perfect. She was not holy. She knew how it felt to be entirely lost in life. Misplaced, misused, mistrusted. Born the wrong child, born to the wrong father who could not love her, pushed out for being the wrong gender, the wrong blood, wrong Crest, forced into a refugee's church.  
  
But that was what she had grown to admire so very much in Dimitri. All those school days ago, Dimitri understood the common thread that connected anyone, regardless of birth. The promise and protection of the Goddess. That the wicked need to be burned away and the world deserves to be protected from the darkness. He believed in that, in his people, and in himself.  
  
Truly, she had admired him with such a quiet, inelegant, girlish regard. She had felt her blush travel the entire length of her body to watch him practice his spear-manship in the courtyard. The way his blue eyes narrowed so harshly, as if he could fight entirely blind—and thusly, she was unafraid to see Dimitri many years later walking into battle, knowing he did not need both eyes to fight as hard as he ever could. She wanted to tell him that he had never once bent or bowed. He was so impossibly strong, and perhaps others feared that, but not her.  
  
She had known how it felt to be so fragile and wounded, and she had to admire that within him; a person that handles power with grace and an intrinsic duty to respect the weak.  
  
It was beautiful. Dimitri made his power beautiful.  
  
Dimitri might believed himself to be damned, but that was the beauty of breathless, soul-shaking faith.  
  
There was always hope for redemption.  
  
How could she deny Dimitri anything when, within his eye, she could see her own sins?  
  
Dimitri’s fingers were still laced in her own. But there was something new within his eyes.  
  
“Would you like to sit down, Your Grace?”  
  
He felt himself involuntarily swallow. She was still so kind, all these years later. It was as if she was complying with regal order, and not from the dearest, deepest affection within her heart. Dimitri found himself holding perhaps too tightly to her hand. He had let it go before.  
  
“...Dimitri. My...my name is Dimitri.”  
  
Mercedes, again, smiled that soft, brilliant smile. “Dimitri. Would you like for me to call you by your first name?”  
  
A slow look of relief spread across his face. “If that pleases you, Mercedes.”  
  
“It would please me if you did sit down, Dimitri,” Mercedes added amusedly. Her voice was still sweet and soft, and Dimitri found himself following her orders without fear.   
  
Slowly, he sat down, although not in the way she had expected. The blunt, incorrect way that he now sat made Mercedes gave a little laugh. Quite like an obedient dog, he faced her, when in fact she needed him to face away. She had accepted the mistake regardless. If he wished to watch her hands as she washed his hair, that wouldn’t change a thing.  
  
She filled the bucket with cold water, straight from the aqueduct from the south running river. It felt almost too cold to her hands, and she frowned slightly, wishing she had the time to let the bucket sit in the sunshine before attempting to soak Dimitri with it. However with the way he ever so gently swayed back and forth while sitting, she feared keeping him upright for too long would cause him to faint.  
  
When she returned, she found Dimitri had tilted his head back, staring into the morning sky as if he had been struck by just how blue it looked. The way the thickness of the trees crowded in around the two, it looked as if it was a circular portal into a better, unreachable place. Mercedes made sure to make a sound of setting down the bucket as not to scare him.  
  
He snapped his head to look at her, his eye quite large, before it settled over her face. “Ah. Yes.”  
  
“Yes?” Mercedes respond back to him, a faint echo of affirmation.  
  
He looked a little confused. He swallowed. He shifted back on his palms, pulling away from her.  
  
“I’m…not sure.” His lips twitched slightly, and, then, for perhaps the first time in years, a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He blinked at her guilty. “I cannot remember...what I was going to tell you.”  
  
Mercedes made a soft sound with her mouth. Dimitri rather liked it. It sounded as if she had already known what it was that he was missing.   
  
“I am ready, Dimitri.” Mercedes’s voice even felt clean. The air, far warmer than Dimitri could recall in a very long time. “Is it alright if I touch you now? I’m going to do my best to make this fast, but…” she lingered, her light eyes suddenly tight to his face. “Your hair might take time.”  
  
“Oh.” His lips parted as if concerned. But his shoulders straightened, ever the soldier, his neck muscles very tight, and he gave a nod to her.  
  
“Good,” she returned. She kept her movements even, heading the advice that so many seemed to aim at her, as if she was too obvious, too innocent, to know what she was doing, as if Dimitri was the first poor soul she had helped bathe. Alas, she didn’t hold it against what they did not know. She just wished they could assume better of her.  
  
Using just one finger, she carefully touched at Dimitri’s temple, cautiously pushing the overgrown bangs away from his eye. She had expected him to stare determinedly at her, wary of every movement, but the moment she touched them, his eye had closed. The orange glow of the morning sun seemed to highlight the purple resting just beneath it. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in so very long. Was he waiting for some reason?  
  
“I’m going to get some water now so I may start with your bangs and roots. I’m afraid this water is going to be cold. Is that okay with you, Dimitri?”  
  
Again, he nodded.  
  
She took the cloth and stirred the river water around in the bucket until it was entirely soaked, and, raising it up with a slow hand, she wetted at his bangs, weaving around tangles and barbs, working only to remove the dirt. It didn’t take long nor much effort. Long streaks of the build up instantly ran down and away from him, dripping in a low, rain-like sound, their greyed drops vanishing into the warm wood of the stump beneath him.  
  
Another sound was trailing, just beneath the tapping of water. Dimitri’s mouth had parted again, and his breathing was a steady, light sound, as if he was moments before speaking, but the words never followed. It concerned Mercedes at first, but when he did not stir, she continued on.  
  
Slowly, she wet his hair, lathering the soap thickly between her fingers. She felt she needed to be quick with this moment, as it would not feel very good. Dimitri’s build up of dirt was layered and entangled and she would need quite a bit of time to ease the layering along before she could split his hair into sections to clean it thoroughly.  
  
Eventually, the cloth went dry, and she returned it to the bucket to re-drench it. Without thinking, almost as if she had just meant it to be so, she had used Dimiti’s neck to hold herself into place as she reached down towards the bucket. At once, she let go.  
  
The skin of his neck had startled her. It felt very warm, too warm, and it became obvious that her musing and fancy of Dimitri was getting in the way of what he was hiding. His entire body was burning in fever, and the cold water was only extending his shaking, as hard as he tried to hide it back. Even his shoulders were shaking. She should have stopped earlier. She should have realized he would be too weak for the entirety of cleaning the mess of his hair.  
  
She smoothed over his hair, careful to straighten out what she could as she quickly worked. It looked clean from the front and sides, but she couldn’t be certain. She leaned forward, her palm to turn his head to the side to better study her handiwork, but, as if simply turning to speak to her, Dimitri moved the curve of his cheek into her palm...  
  
...and then his head loll’d forward, straight into her palms, and she frantically tried to keep him from collapsing onto her. Mercedes quickly caught him before he fell entirely, although she struggled with the dead weight of Dimitri inside of her arms. The soapy suds pushed across his body and across his face, only a breadth away from his undamaged eye. She hadn’t realized it but within her massaging of his hair away from his face, his eye patch had become loose and it had slid away from its usual placement.  
  
“Dimitri?!” Mercedes cried frantically. She tried not to shake him too roughly, but she was scared of what it meant if he did not open his eyes again.  
  
He moved, thankfully, a true blessing from the Goddess, as he stirred in her arms. Her heart restarted within her chest; she was not too late to save him from a bad fever, or worse, sun-poisoning. And, with his within his awakening, Mercedes watched as both of his eyes opened. One was pale and blue as she had ever remembered it. The other was torn, blackened through the socket, as if there never had once existed an eye at all.  
  
She resisted a scream. She resisted scrambling back and away on the palms of her hands, just a mere heartbeat from running away from him.  
  
He truly looked...horrifying.   
  
It was not his fault that he had been wounded so terribly. It was not his fault that the patch had loosened. It was, perhaps, hers, for not noticing in time, as she had that wondered if he might faint, and thusly, pushed him until he had.  
  
She forced her voice to remain as calm as she could manage it. “Dimitri, are you hurt?”  
  
“No,” He pulled himself half-way up. His arms had reached out blindly, disoriented, unable to hold onto anything, and he began sinking backwards. One of his hands moved to rub at his injured eye, as if perplexed to how he could feel the scarred lid beneath his fingers “Dizzy.”  
  
“You need water,” she decided at once. She should have offered it far earlier, before she had decided to just bathe him without asking if he had needed something so simple, something that he wouldn’t have thought to do for himself.  
  
She filled the bucket anew, dragging it close and offered it before him.  
  
Dimitri did not take a small sip as he had hope; he practically knocked the bucket out of her timid grip in order to reach it faster. She pushed back attempting to ask Dimitri to take smaller sips: it was far too late for that. He had already crushed the hard lip of the bucket into his mouth, swallowing quickly and frantically, as if he would never get to touch water again. Mercedes watched him empty the rest of the bucket over his head, his eyes closed if only for a moment, in the relief of the coolness rushing over him. He then brought the bucket back to his mouth, poised to drink again, but found none left.  
  
His head snapped in Mercedes’s direction, as if she had called out to him.  
  
But she did not. She could not.  
  
For he was looking at her with _ both _ eyes. The dead one seemed leak from within. She told herself it was the water he had poured over his face. It _ had _ to be. He was blind in that eye. The tissue had been brutally ripped out, and hardly anything soft remained. It was just an open, empty socket, and he couldn’t see out of it, couldn’t drip out of it, not tears, not blood, not bile, but still, the empty socket weeped lowly with a soot-like liquid, hidden layers of dirt that had been stolen away beneath his unmoved eye patch.  
  
_ It is only dirt, _ Mercedes told herself this quietly, over and over, as Dimitri’s face turned to look around him once more.  
  
Again, the dead eye settled over her.  
  
“Water, please.” His mouth moved weakly, exposing his yellowed teeth. The raw red of his gums. “Please. More.”  
  
His face looked ill and torn, but his voice reminded her that he was just a suffering man, one confused and looking to her for guidance. She was supposed to be a guide for any and all that she looked after.  
  
...So why couldn’t she move?  
  
Her silence seemed to frustrate Dimitri. He attempted to rise but found he lacked the strength to do so. He looked to Mercedes again, and, mercifully, a pain must have found him, for his eyes closed, and Mercedes felt as if a tight grip upon her soul had lessened. His knees had moved, curling into his chest, and he lowered his head onto his knees, his shaking becoming more violent. “Please. Water, please, water.”  
  
His voice had become a rambling loop of just two words: _ water, please. _  
  
Mercedes shook herself, terrified that she had not moved at once; that it took her prince to become a poor sick creature, begging on his knees for water. She forced herself off of her knees and took the bucket. She filled it as much as she could and walked back towards Dimitri, who was still trembling, still whimpering into his hands, and she held back for a moment.  
  
He had already taken in quite a bit of water in a short period of time, and she had enough experience to know how easy it was to make a dehydrated person sick on their own desperation for water. She wondered if perhaps she could overtake his stagnant strength if he tried to fight her for the entirety of the bucket.  
  
She collected her skirts and settled herself close to his side. His shivering was entering into his hands as they had pushed up and into his hair, and he looked as if he was close to tearing out great fistfuls of hair without realizing it.  
  
“I have water for you, Dimitri,” Mercedes began, slowly, articulately, and she waited once more for Dimitri to turn to face her, for him to let go of his panic to see that she was here, soon to ease the pain curling inside of him. “But you can only have a little more. Then, you must stop, and I may use my hand to do so, but I only mean to stop you for just a little while. Once you’ve rested, you may have more. Please, try to breathe, and know that you will have more soon.”  
  
His eyes opened. He turned to her. The pale eye stared at her as if she was not there. His deaden one looked to her as well... as if she had never existed at all.  
  
But his hand clumsy slid across the sand, shaking to touch at the bucket seated in her lap. He attempted to lift it, but the weight of the water would not budge, and he was too weak to pull it any closer.  
  
The gouging panic lingered across his face made Mercedes understood at once what he needed her to do. She moved the bucket to his lips herself, careful to make sure he could not rip it from her grip as he had before, determined that he did not make himself sick from drinking too much, too fast.  
  
Again, Dimitri drank, however, it appeared to Mercedes that most of the water seemed to miss his mouth. It rolled down his chin, neck, into his clothes and pants, but, clearly, he did not notice nor care. She allowed him only a few heartbeats more to drink, and then she would take the water back again. She found herself shushing him softly, as one would a sick child, and when she pulled the bucket away from him, she had to use the palm of her hand to press his chest back again. But the look of want and devastation to have the water taken again from him was almost enough to have her offer the water to him again, to allow him to drink as much as he wanted. She found her strength to deny him, regardless of the small, hurt sound he made when he pressed against her, clumsy and too hot and too tired to use the words that had long abandoned him.  
  
“No, please, don’t, ” He begged her, his voice ragged and cracked. “Please, _ please, _ it hurts.”  
  
“I know, sweet one, I know,” Mercedes refused to let her heartbreak. She couldn’t. She must always be strong for those that could not repair their hearts for themselves. “It is because of your fever. You may have more in just a little while.”  
  
He breathed heavily at her, the dead eye dripping and cruel, while his good eye hardly wavered from her face. He looked positively petrifying to her, somewhere between a demon and a man, and again, Mercedes forced herself to remain quite still, uncertain of how to move him from this moment of delusion.  
  
“Here,” she had found the rag along the sand between them. She had dampened it again, and offered it out along his cheek. “This is cold for you.”  
  
But Dimitri did not seem to notice the cloth, nor her hand, nor much of anything else. However, his eye continued to stare, the pale blue defocusing into some unseen distance, far, far away from her.  
  
“Dimitri?” Mercedes inched closer, the sand rough over her knees, layering directly into her skirts. She lifted her free hand to turn his face into the cloth. This seemed to bring Dimitri back to her. His blue eye found her face again, then the cloth, and he pushed his face into it gratefully, earning a sigh from his open mouth.  
  
His eye had closed again. However, he seemed to be stronger than before. She could only hope the water had revived him enough to stand.  
  
“Here,” she moved the cloth over his mouth, then his nose. “See? Isn’t that better?”  
  
Dimitri said nothing else. But he returned her gentle wiping by dragging himself closer to her. Soon, she had cleaned most of his face, although she could not help but to pull the cloth away in cowardice when his deadened eye attempted to be cleaned. It made her hands shake to touch such a frail, uncertain spot, unable to stand the feeling of give behind his pale lid, that behind it nothing else remained.  
  
Eventually, much to the watery twist inside of her stomach, Dimitri opened both of his eyes again. The look of stubborn awareness from earlier in the day was ebbing away, and she tried not to speak too loudly, a helpless attempt to save Dimitri from retreating back inside of himself, the way she had seen him do for too many months on end. She was losing, but perhaps, she should be grateful for the time that she had. After all, he hadn’t spoken out of turn or to himself for nearly their entire time together.  
  
Dimitri seemed to regard her as some kind of safe person. And that was everything, everything Mercedes could have wished for out of such a beautiful summer day.  
  
Still, she felt she should end their time together on her own terms. It felt only right to have Dimitri’s permission to end their time before he became too lost to understand why she had stopped, and that she had not stopped as some form of punishment. His frantic whispering in the dais often led him to believe that some unseen force, just out of reach, was coming for him, ever closer to ending his life.  
  
Suicide. Yes. The very word.  
  
When she saw Dimitri, pale and empty, standing before the statue of Sothis…  
  
She always made sure to reach for him. She always made sure to take his hands, to push some warmth back into the limp coldness of his fingers. She always made sure to speak to him, soft and slow, even if he had never once replied to her. Even if he couldn’t remember how to smile or speak or laugh. She was here for him, and she would never, ever leave him alone.  
  
How hard that was expressed to him, day after day, fleeting and torturous, as if she were the only person who had tried. Felix was too cynical to think he wasn’t attempting the same as her, in his own way. But Mercedes understood Felix’s pain. His anger, how impossible it felt, to watch someone die so softly, swallowed up by their own thoughts. To remind him that he was loved and wanted. That she was here. And she was still here, shaken and scared, but she had to keep going.  
  
She must keep going, or perhaps Dimitri might truly die on his knees before her, silently begging her to stay with him, not with his voice or his body, but within the darkness of his damaged eye, to stay with him in the dark.  
  
She had pushed forward a little more on her knees, and, carefully, she collected his cold hands inside of hers. He did not respond, but that was okay. She moved her thumbs over the thick scars over the back of his hands, back and forth, over and over, and waited for him.  
  
Eventually, little by little, she felt him fading towards her. His eyes had closed again, a sheen of sweat over his skin, but he looked as if he might sleep if only allowed to lie down. She let go of his hands to steady him.  
  
At this, he opened both of his eyes. The darkness within one still scared her. She would not lie.  
But she smiled. She could not resist smiling at him, somehow to connect to him, to tell him he could rest on her shoulder.

"You look very tired, Dimitri." Mercedes said softly. She squeezed gently at his arm, unsure of how to amend for her rough scrubbing of his scalp from earlier, if that had made him feel all the more ill. "Do you wish for me stop the bath?" 

His head hung low, turned away from her in the morning light.  
  
"Please," was all he whispered. 

"Of course." She kept her tone pleasant. "That is not a problem at all. We can take all the time we need. We can even start again tomorrow." 

"I...please." Dimitri repeated again, this time his voice was far stronger. "I said to stop. _ Please." _

At once Mercedes dropped her hands to her side. She had felt stricken by the outburst.  
  
"Your G—Dimitri, I am so very sorry. I—"

"But she's...she's so _nice.” _Dimitri began again, his voice low and guilty. “I know I don't deserve it. I know, I know, I know, please."

Mercedes forced her expression to remain that of concern, and not repulsion. She had never seen Dimitri this close before...nor had she heard his voice sound so...desperate, scared somehow, beyond wishing for water or warmth, the things she could not give without help and time, but in genuine, heart wrenching _ fear. _

"Please,” His hands were back at his face, covering both eyes. “I don't want this. Please, please, I said I was sorry.” His raw throat cracked painfully over the next five words: _ “I said I was sorry!" _ _  
  
_

Mercedes felt her heart practically plummet right out of her chest. Dimitri had not once moved his face to look at her since he had started talking. Perhaps, he wasn't even speaking to her at all...even through the times he had been aware of her. His hands dropped suddenly, as if angered, and his eyes were open wide and blood-shot, openly upset at the empty air. His deaden eye seemed to stare into the unseen.  
  
The morning was bright. The sunshine was strong. The shade felt cool and refreshing, along with the wind, and Mercedes could smell the faint smoke from the dining hall’s roaring fire. But Dimitri perhaps, saw nothing, felt nothing, and he was being dragged back into that desecrated place inside of him.  
  
But Dimitri…The Dimitri that had journeyed with her to the bathhouse. The Dimitri that had struggled to re-tell her his name, as if they were meeting for the very first time. The boy that had held her hand with the grace and strength she had seen within his eyes during the Horsebow Moon, those five long years ago…  
  
That Dimitri was no longer here with her.   
  
This Dimitri...the one that begged for water and still tried to push her away, as if he did not know her…This Dimitri only saw ghosts. 

She had to do something; by the Goddess's will, she was meant to do more than stand here and let the weak suffer! She quickly steeled her shoulders back and thrust her hands forward, capturing Dimitri's large pale hands between her fingers. She quickly brought them back to her face. She kept her steady. And, with more than enough grace to pray before a sinner, Mercedes began perhaps the strangest mantra of her entire life. 

"Excuse me!" She cut in at once, having to over take the rough, frantic ranting of Dimitri's words. She made sure her words were direct and hers alone. She raised her voice loudly and never faltered her tone. "This is a private conversation; I do not recall allowing anyone else inside of this bathhouse but myself and my friend. I do not wish to invite you here nor are you welcome to stay. And I certainly do not care who you think you are nor what you want with Dimitri. I command you to leave him, by the word of the Goddess and my strength as a priestess." She swallowed thinly, hardly allowing for breath or pause. "Be gone with you!" 

And then, like that, it was over. 

Slowly, with the dampened heat of the bath house had curled the hair just behind her ears, dusted with perspiration of her sudden shouting, Mercedes allowed herself to study Dimitri.  
  
His eyes closed but a wetness was fresh down his face. He had started to cry.  
  
Her heart filled with pain for one long moment. Had her yelling upset him? Or was this something more? Something that he had wished for over the turning of so many days?  
  
Dimitri let out a sob. He had begun to tremble, as if the sound had been there for far too long, and only now he could allow it to burst from him, exhausted and afraid, but finally, finally, _ crying. _ But it felt almost pure to Mercedes. She had heard this noise before, in the church of her childhood, whilst holding the hand of an old, dying farmer; crying away the hurt and pain, the sound splintered, a humble way to express the purest form of grief.  
  
“Shh,” she murmured again. She moved her fingers lightly through his wet hair. “It’s okay now. It’s over. They’re gone. They can’t hurt you when you’re with me.”  
  
“...I’m sorry,” Dimitri replied, the words thick with tears. They would be the final words he could bring to his lips before he completely fell apart before her. He slipped down into her lap, his head pillowed along her thighs, the skin there muffling the harsh sounds of his sobbing.  
  
Mercedes stilled, her hand still loose over the crown of his head.

How long had it been since he had felt the skin of another person that was not sent to kill him? The nature of restoring humanity began with many steps, but first of all, to rediscover one’s heart. Had he simply wanted someone to rest against for so long? Mercedes kept her breathing slow and quiet, attempting to not move his head.  
  
She looked up into the blue morning sky, stretched long before her. Yes. She could feel it. This was a sign from the Goddess. This was what she was meant to do. And they had time, didn’t they? Mercedes moved her hand slowly over his neck, protective and strong.  
  
Yes. It was meant to be.

* * *

And then, the moment was over. It did not take long. Dimitri had only begun to calm, to doze heavily into her lap, when Mercedes heard a new voice, calling faintly through the walk-way behind her.  
  
“Hello?” It was a man’s voice, loud, and only growing closer. “Uh, I promise, my eyes are totally closed. Not that I have my way memorized to the women’s bathroom or anything like that. I mean, what kind of person would I be if I could do that, _ right? _ ”  
  
Mercedes felt her chest tightened in clear, potent revulsion.  
  
_ Sylvain. _ _  
_ _  
_ He had always rubbed her the wrong way. The dripping honey-tones of his voice, the way he carefully dishevel his wild red hair in some sex-shorn way, the way his eyes seemed to needlessly undress every woman in the room. He was completely without shame, without purity, and, more than anything, without an ounce of sincerity.  
  
Mercedes felt the hair on the back of her neck rise quite cattily, dispelling the peace she had hoped to bring to Dimitri.  
  
She could not hold it back, her dislike of him always too apparent over her features. She was not shy of letting Sylvain know that she disapproved of him in practically every way, right down to the way he breathed.  
  
“Mercedes,” Slyvian’s voice drifted lower, some might say into genuine surprise, but it was impossible to tell the difference between what Slyvain pretend to feel and what he truly thought. Then, footsteps, faster towards her, as if seeing her over the sand had spurred a shock of fear through him. “Mercedes! What happened? Are you alright? And is that…”  
  
His brown eyes blinked down at her. Something had shifted behind the reckless laughter that shielded him from anything serious. Mercedes dared not to put a name to what had replaced it. She refused to turn towards him at all.  
  
“I do not need your help, Sylvain,” Mercedes told him. Her voice felt was tight and quiet.  
  
Sylvain stared at her as if she had grown leathery wings, and perhaps a touch of horns, that look upon her face so hard and angry, it struggled to find some way to not rattle her further. To hear her sweet, gentle voice turn as sour as an overly ripened apple just to be near him…  
  
It wasn’t the time to tell her he found it incredibly hot.  
  
No. Definitely not the time.  
  
Because there, curled into her lap, he could see Dimitri’s body, the loose rise and fall of his shoulders. Sylvain quickly read the mood of the bathhouse; the overturned water bucket, the sodden cloth pushed aside through the sandy flooring, the pure fact that Dimitri didn’t smell like a rotting body. Sylvain found himself smiling in spite of the emotional experience that had probably fallen directly onto Mercedes’s shoulders.  
  
He couldn’t seem to recall the last time he’d seen Dimitri outside of a battlefield or motionless before the dais. And to see him upon a woman of all things?  
  
And with _ Mercedes, _ of all the women to choose?  
  
Sylvain couldn’t say he’d personally pick Mercedes. She was beautiful and sweet, too sweet, really, for her own good, but she was also a little too haughty and dignified for what he liked about most girls; plus, Mercedes was just so...untouchable, all soft curves and musical voice, and there just wasn’t much sexy about that. Not when there were other girls that laughed a little too easily and leaned towards Sylvain’s mouth when he whispered sweet nothings into their ears, but for _ Dimitri _ to want Mercedes? Yeah, that math added up real quick.  
  
Again, his smile grew. His best friend, finally in the arms of a woman, and it had only taking losing an eye, a war, and perhaps his entire mind, but hey, he was there, wasn’t he?  
  
Mercedes had passed a quick glance over Sylvain’s roguish face. He was smiling quite happily, and it made her wish for something heavy and solid to fall over his backside, just for a shock of pain to add to his obnoxious enjoyment, embarrassed as she felt, to be pinned to the sand by Dimitri’s body in some impious way.  
  
Oh yes. She knew _ exactly _ what was making Sylvain smile such a musing smile.  
  
She pushed her nose up at him snootily. It was so unbecoming of her, she knew, but she could not help it. Of all the people to possibly come towards her prayer, it had to be the most _ un_ruly, _ un_wanted, _ un_helpful person of all.  
  
“I do not wish for help, Sylvain.” Mercedes said stiffly.  
  
“Um, yeah, I mean, sure, but you can’t just expect me to leave you like this.” Sylvain tossed back easily. He had already invaded the space of the bathhouse, careless and unhurried, as if he had returned upon her personal request. “Plus, I’m not going to leave a fair lady such as yourself alone with my charmingly unconscious friend. That’s just not good etiquette.”  
  
Her shoulders shot upwards, as if she could feel his words travel uncomfortably up her spine. “I do not wish for _ your _ help, Sylvain,” she replied once more, this time her voice distinctly angry.  
  
“Well, tough luck I guess, priestess. I heard _ your _ screaming and _ I _ came to help.” Sylvain returned. But his eyes no longer were looking at her face. They had fallen onto Dimitri and Sylvain’s red brows furrowed in a strange, disconcerting way. “Did he faint?”  
  
Mercedes’s shoulders then drooped, just a little, in affirmation. Yes. He had. And it was her fault.  
  
But Sylvain did not seem to see it that way. “He did that a lot when we were kids. We were raised in a colder climate, you know? I think it’s our blood; the heat just murders our energy.”  
  
Again, Mercedes seemed to soften her defenses. She couldn’t punish Dimitri with her own selfish dislike of Sylvain, even if the two men had been friends for many years. “I don’t think he can stand on his own.”  
  
“Gotcha,” was all Sylvain said. He bent low and touched at Dimitri’s shoulder, giving him a little shake. “Come on, bud. You can’t take all of Mercedes’s morning, right? That’s not like you, huh?”  
  
A low, soft sound answered Sylvain as Dimitri only pushed his face further into Mercedes’s lap.  
  
“Totally get what you mean, believe me, you can tell me later what a huge jerk I am taking her away,” Sylvain chatted back to Dimitri easily, his voice somehow unphased. “But yeah, this has to end.”  
  
It wasn’t hard to lift Dimitri upwards, first into a sitting position, and then, slinging a limp arm around Sylvain’s shoulder, easing Dimitri to stand. Mercedes watched Sylvain move with a distinct, overly slow gentleness. And furthermore, with a bitter flash of resentment, she noticed that calm, completely unshaken way Sylvain had looked into Dimitri’s eyes, particularly into the darkness of his empty socket, and seemed not to care that there was an emptiness there looking back at him.  
  
A strange look passed over Sylvain’s face. Sylvain couldn’t be sure but Dimitri felt lighter somehow, as if it was only the padded weight of his plated armor that hid how much weight he had dropped.  
  
Sylvain then looked towards Mercedes. “You good?”  
  
She resisted, again, a very rude comment to his question. Instead, she brushed off her skirts with a refined, sweeping dignity before she pushed herself onto her own feet. “I was never uncomfortable.”  
  
Sylvain’s seemed to be shrinking away from the heat within her eyes, clearly just as uncomfortable as she felt. But he couldn’t leave Dimitri to sleep in the sand.  
  
“Right. Uh. To his room, then?”  
  
They started on wards with Dimitri’s feet more or less dragging through the sand beneath them. Mercedes found herself walking carefully behind the pair, her eyes tight to Dimitri’s bowed head, studying the fragility by which Sylvain carried him along, slow and measured, as if he had done this a thousand times before.  
  
Mercedes couldn’t help but think that perhaps Sylvain was not always so selfish and lustful. Perhaps he could love something outside of himself. And, perhaps, that love was for Dimitri, someone he spoke so easily too, as if he did not see the dark parts of Dimitri’s mind, did not notice his deaden eye, nor care if Dimitri even remembered his name.  
  
Sylvian remembered Dimitri exactly as he had been, unbroken, unchanged, and it seemed to Sylvain that that was all that really mattered.  
  
When Dimitri’s footing attempted to slow down Sylvain’s movement, Sylvain halted at once, worried. “What’s up?”  
  
“Water,” Dimitri whispered weakly; his cheek was against Sylvain’s shoulder. “Water.”   
  
Sylvain frowned. Dimitri certainly felt unusually hot, clinging to his side as if he felt he was perpetually falling. “Sure, bud. We’ll get you some.”  
  
He struggled again, and again, Sylvain waited. Mercedes couldn’t make out the soft words that Sylvain was saying towards Dimitri, as if he knew some secret way to make Dimitri give up his fight, it didn’t take long for the energy to leave Dimitri again.  
  
“Ah,” Slyvain said quietly, as if only to himself. “How long have you had a fever?”  
  
Mercedes said nothing. She wasn’t sure herself. He seemed as if his fever had started in due time with the sun, but perhaps he had been feverish for far longer.  
  
“Well, whatever.” He turned his head back to make sure Mercedes was following along. “Could you hurry it up, Mercedes?”  
  
And, begrudgingly, Mercedes did, picking up her feet to walk beside Sylvain, instead of a shadow at his back.

* * *

“There,” Sylvain breathed out. They were back in Dimitri’s quarters. He spared no time in getting Dimitri comfortable, all but tucking the prince into bed with a maternal-like attention to detail. “Much better. Less sand, you know? Hate that stuff.”

Mercedes stood behind him, her arms crossed about her chest. She had only left briefly to fetch a bowl of iced water and a spoon. Upon her return, she had expected Sylvain’s ‘chivalrous’ work to be done, but still he stayed, a chair pulled to Dimitri’s bedside, as if he had been chatting about old times during her absence. He truly had the most uncanny ability to act completely unphased, only adding to the bitter seed opening inside of Mercedes’s chest.  
  
She thought she had understood all kinds of strengths and widths of love.  
  
So why did she feel so angry to see Sylvain taking care of Dimitri with such ease?  
  
Dimitri hardly said much else, beyond wishing for water, but he had brought a hand up to touch again at his scarred lid. Then, with the same hand, he reached up to touch at his other eye, covering it up. Mercedes had to look away when the thin lid of his empty eye fell open.  
  
“...I can’t see…”  
  
Sylvain’s smile seemed to dim. “Yeah, I bet that’s scary, huh?” He moved, completely unafraid, to turn Dimitri’s face toward his own, and he pushed Dimitri’s hand down so that his good eye could see once more. “How about this one? Better?”  
  
A unfurl of relief trickled across his friend’s face, as if he had forgotten about his remaining eye.  
  
“Yes.” Then, Dimitri swallowed, a look of pain across his face.  
  
“Oh, water, right,” Sylvain amended at once. He turned and took the bowl from the flooring, added the spoon, and lifted it back to Dimitri’s lips. “Just a little, okay? Glare at me all you want, but Mercie here told me you already had a lot.”  
  
_ Mercie? _ Mercedes sighed hotly through her nose. She blinked at the ceiling, tempted to correct Sylvain that he was _ not _ allowed to call her by any such pet-name, but still, relented when Dimitri’s face crumpled with relief as the water, cold and merciful, smoothed down his throat.  
  
“Look,” Sylvain had turned now to face Mercedes. She quickly rearranged her expression to be neutral and aware, not to show how much Dimitri’s dead eye still frightened her. “I’m going to try and find some soup in the kitchen. I don’t think he’s eaten anything today. Will you come with me?”  
  
She blinked at him, dismissed. “Go _ with _ you?”  
  
A hand scratched tiredly at the back of Sylvain’s head, a relaxed tick that only made Mercedes more annoyed. “Yeah, you know, I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to be alone with him right now.”  
  
“No,” Mercedes said quite sternly. “I don’t think it is a good idea for him to be alone, either.”  
  
A flash of annoyance lifted that friendly facade over Sylvain’s face. Then, it was gone. “Mercie, I don’t think...”  
  
_ “Mercedes,” _ She corrected, ice in her chest.  
  
“Mercedes.” His brown eyes looked at her in distress. “Please. I’m not trying to fight you.”  
  
A thin tug pulled at the coldness in her chest. She knew that. She knew it and believed it and still, her voice felt tight. “I am fine alone with him.”  
  
A frustrated sigh churned from Sylvain’s mouth. “Fine. Be like that. Just...I don’t know, fine.” He stood up from the chair, pulled the water bowl as far as it could get, just in case Dimitri made a shady attempt for it, and showed himself out. “I’ll be right back.”

Mercedes said nothing.  
  
“Ya know,” Sylvain added, turning back briefly from the door frame, “For someone that talks about respect and kindness and blah-blah-blah so much, it wouldn’t kill you to drop some of that _ holier-than-thou _ vanity, alright? I’m only here for Dimitri and I couldn't care less if you hate me for that or not. People have said worse things to me over far, far less.”  
  
Then, with a grumble, he was gone.  
  
And Mercedes felt the ice within her chest melt instantly.  
  
Because Dimitri was looking at her, almost thoughtfully. And she moved to take Sylvain’s place in the chair beside his bed. She reached to take his hand with her own. “Dimitri, I’m so glad you’re alright. I was thinking that perhaps—”  
  
“Water,” he interrupted shortly. His eyes had closed again. “Please.”  
  
“Dimitri,” Mercedes felt her voice press into a whisper. “I can’t give you any more.”  
  
Another look of pain. _“Why?” _  
  
She pushed her thumbs against his skin, debating her answer. “Soon. I’ll give you more once Sylvain returns.”  
  
Suddenly, his hand ripped itself from her grasp.  
  
And that dead eye stared at her, empty and dark, as if she was something he couldn’t stand to look at.  
  
She looked down at her hand. The force of his hand had flown so suddenly from her grip that his nails had given her a thin slice across her open palm. She watched a trickle of blood weep from the skin; she felt a sharp burn of pain. “Dimitri…”  
  
“Is it poisoned?” His voice felt stronger than she had heard it all day. And angrier. “Is that _ why?” _ He then lifted the full force of his face to stare into her eyes. “Are you here to kill me?”  
  
“D-Dimitri,” Mercedes felt completely frozen, as if locked in a spell of silence. “No, I’d never hurt—”  
  
At once, Dimitri’s large hand collected the front of her blouse, and he pulled her close to him, and she felt the tunneling darkness of his dead eye rushing to over-take her. Her lips closed tight, hardly able to cry out. “I asked you a question.” His voice was shaking with the intensity of his demand, seething, dark and hostile, and she couldn’t understand what she had done wrong, what had happened. “Are you trying to _ poison _ me?”  
  
“No, no, I—”  
  
“You’re lying. I can see it in your eyes,” Dimitri hissed. His mouth was close to hers, and, for a moment, she could see it: his teeth taking her bottom lip inside of her mouth, and tearing the flesh away, ripping her mouth apart, blood and muscle and sinew, gushing down her chin, over her neck, maintained by the hatred inside of his unseeing eye. “Tell me the truth!”  
  
Mercedes pushed away at once, her hands across Dimitri’s chest, wild and terrified. She couldn’t look him in the face any longer; this Dimitri, this animal, this wasn’t right, and it wasn’t her fault. He began to hurt her with the strength of his fingers pushing through her clothing.  
  
“Let go of me!”  
  
“Answer me,” Dimitri’s hands never slackened, He only grabbed her harder across the chest. Mercedes twisted, knocking his face away in the motion, and she felt herself cry out in pain as his fingers locked, nails scratching at her skin. Tears sprang to her eyes, and her mind fought desperately to find a way out of his grasp.  
  
At once, she was freed, for only a moment, before the blinding strength of a blow snapped her cheek in the opposite direction. He hit her, hard, and the room spun hotly for a moment, completely surreal, as Dimitri tried to pull her back to him.  
  
At once, he stilled. Her shirt still tight in his grip. He brought his opposite hand down, cuffed around her elbow, and she felt him squeeze the bones within her arm, as if testing how much he could increase the pressure of his fingers before they would break.  
  
His blond hair had fallen to cover his good eye. In its place, she could only stare into the void of his skull, endless and haunted.  
  
“You call yourself a priestess. Is that what Sylvain thinks of you?” He threw his head back to give a cruel, mirthless laugh. “Heretic.” His hands tightened with every word. “Heretic. Deceiver. I had thought I saw the holy light in you, but you are just like the rest—women, so easily able to sway the mind of a man at his weakest—but I see you, holding me here, against my will, denying me something so humane as water, until I am so helpless that I’d drink whatever poison you’d decide to offer to my lips? I will rip that tongue from your vile mouth so you cannot defile the sacred prayers of the Church of Seiros ever again, and perhaps I will keep it, dried and hardened, a totem to remind myself of your hallowed words and how I _ enjoyed _ the sound of your screams falling into silence.”  
  
Again, Mercedes cried out, feeling the bone starting to shift inside of her arm. A single crushing force that was starting to bend the feeling of her skin, her bones, her nerves.  
  
His teeth formed into a skinless smile. “Are you from the Empire? You should have known what fate your being alive would deliver upon you— as if you had a chance to fight it. A witch. A _ deceiver. _ I shall crush you, and you shall never know the grace of heaven, shall never again taste of the life that you hold so dear; as if a cunt like you would know what is to feel pure.”  
  
_ Enough! _Mercedes cried within her mind, then, with a high shout at the top of her lungs she lunged back; she felt her arm twist and pop along its socket as she threw out her hand towards Dimitri’s face. 

_ "You may never speak to me in this way!" _ Mercedes cried out, her voice like a brutal whip of scorn, and she threw her palm out to grasp at the side of his face. A blast of white, powerful magic, she aimed it through his eye, through his head, as if she could feel the pulse of it beat against the wall behind him. _ "Now. Go. Down!" _  
  
And, at once, Dimitri let go of her.  
  
The weight of his body topped him over, off of the bed, and then dropped him to the floor. His violent shaking had returned, rushed into true convulsion, before he was promptly sick. The water inside of his stomach had been brought back up in a few painful retches.  
  
Mercedes felt numb. Her arm was numb, as well as her chest where he had marked her with his hands.  
  
And then, from behind, she felt herself being picked up and hauled out, away from the crumpled, coughing form of Dimitri across the floor, as if some vengeful spirit had fully come to save her from the mad prince.  
  
She felt crushed, warm and solid, against the chest of someone who had sunk onto his knees, shuddering against her. “Oh, Mercedes, _ Mercedes, _ I was too late, I was too _ late, _ Mercedes, Goddess, _ forgive me, _ I didn’t know, I didn’t know _ he was hurting you.” _ _  
_  
Sylvain. His face was pressed into her hair, tangled and lost and devastated.  
  
Mercedes felt her arm loose from its socket. The shock was fading away, and in its place, the burning of the attack was falling over her. And his words. And the darkness in his empty eye.  
  
But it was Sylvain that sounded the most in pain. He rushed to take her arms, to touch her face, to move her hair. It was as if he wasn’t sure where to begin checking for more hurts. He was shaking, too, holding her too tightly to his chest, and he just kept talking over her soft protests.  
  
“Are you hurt, Mercedes?”  
  
She nodded. She nodded into his chest. A numbness was now pooling from deep inside of her. Shock, she could only guess, as she had seen overcome the faces of the injured she had cared for herself. She couldn’t feel her arm. She couldn’t feel her body.  
  
Using the slowest, more careful of movements, Sylvain took her bruised arm into his hands, as if he might’ve wanted to begin a prayer, but he held it steady. His brown eyes inched up her skin, studying the indents of nails and circular bruises from Dimitri’s fingers over her elbow. It looked pretty bad. Perhaps not broken, but something close to it, ripped from the shoulder of her arm.  
  
“Here. Let me carry you to Manuela. She’ll know what to do.”  
  
“...No,” Mercedes whispered into his chest. “Please.” He couldn’t see her face, but he knew what the small, patterned warmth meant when the front of his shirt started to feel damp.  
  
He stopped at once.  
  
“...What can I do for you, Mercedes?” His voice was warm and steady against her. He had thrown Dimitri’s door closed as he rushed her out, but it took everything, _ everything _ within him, years of pity and friendship, to not pry back open that door, and offer the pain back towards Dimitri as much as he had brought over it Mercedes, two-fold.  
  
“...Just stay here.” her voice was broken, washed in fresh tears.  
  
“I can do that,” he whispered back to her.

He moved a hand to rub at her back as Sylvain tried to think of what to say. It turned out, however, that it wouldn’t be for long. One of Mercedes’ palms had moved up, to push against the center of his chest, and she pulled herself away from his comforts, clearly unwanting of his touches. The wild, soft rejection of his entire body caused a cold miserable chill to crawl up his back. He was many despicable things, but Sylvain would never touch a woman when she didn’t wish for him too, so they broke apart, Mercedes sobbing silently, her chest shaking with pain and sadness, and Sylvain could only sit and watch her.  
  
What had become of Dimitri? What had Sylvain _ allowed _ him to become?  
  
He closed his eyes in self-hatred. It just wasn’t right. It was sickening, and wrong, and Mercedes had paid for it. If only he had fought her harder. If only she didn’t hate him so much, if she would have listened to him.  
  
“He hates me,” she finally whispered.  
  
“What? Oh, Mercedes. No. Honey, no. No, he doesn’t.” Sylvain countered softly. No. How wrong she was to say such a thing. How right she was to feel the way she did. To suddenly be attacked by someone that seemed to desperate to need you. He couldn’t imagine the complicated knots inside of her heart.  
  
“He told me so,” Mercedes whimpered.  
  
He brushed her hair with his fingertips, pushing it back behind her ears. He tried to think of what to say, how to say it.  
  
Finally, he thought he might have had something. It wasn’t much. It could hardly take away her pain. But he had thought of a way to explain what he saw inside of Dimitri.  
  
"He couldn’t hate you, Mercedes. He couldn’t. He’s just...confused. He probably didn’t even remember who you were. And you know how I know that? Because, Mercedes, you’re like the pinnacle of what Dimitri wants to be. Just, absolutely everything he _ ever _ wanted to be as a person, and had he known that, if he could see that, he would have never touched you.”  
  
“What?” The word was throaty, wet and shocked.  
  
“I don’t know if you know this about him, Mercedes, but Dimitri is pretty devout. I mean. He used to be." How strange and wrong it felt to speak of the man as it he wasn't one and the same? "He didn't show it off well, like, he never chastised me about not knowing The Saints’ prayer or anything like that. But you could tell he was." Sylvain gave a soft laugh, his eye closed at the memory. "But he was such a good guy about it, you know? It was all about the little things. I’d catch him praying under his breath before a feast or sometimes before he'd pick up his spear."  
  
Sylvain then gave a long sigh. 

"I'm not a believer." Sylvain continued quietly. "I mean." He wavered silently. "Maybe I am. A little. It's...tempting, you know?" His eyes turned to stare at the door, and beyond it, as if he could take in Dimitri's face, the scarred dead skin, a thick red line that puckered as if newly opened, over the thin lid of his eye. "I never blamed Dimitri for believing. Felix? Heh, well, he's a completely different story, but me? I don't know. I just wanted Dimitri to feel...better." 

In the darkness, her face pressed against his chest, Mercedes couldn't imagine the way he might have looked when he went on.  
  
His voice was low and distant as he shook his head. "The Tragedy of Duscur...I can't begin to tell you, Mercedes, what it had done to him." He paused. "To all of us, really. Me and Ingrid and Felix, too. But Dimitri. His _ entire _family, gone to ash and dust. How could I deny someone so desperate to see his family again? To think their souls are on-going. Eternal. At peace. And maybe, some day, if you're good enough, you could see them again?" Sylvain's voice began to shake. "I don't pretend to understand everything. I know I'm not a good person." He took a breath, steadier now. "But I'd never...I’d never take that hope from Dimitri. Never." 

He went on still. "I think that's why he’s at the church so much. I don't know if he remembers the words or the prayers or hymns, but I think, some small part of him, wants to go back there." His face darkened. "I worry that the faithful can't see the path before them. I think having some distance means I can make a better judgement of if you're going to the Eternal Flames or if you're righteous." He softened. "I think, even before the war, before he became like this...he had damned himself a long, long time ago. 

Still, she said nothing. And, Sylvain thought painfully, _ what was there for her to say? _ It felt so...lost. Spiraling out of control, with her sitting there in his lap, crying and wounded, and he _ just kept talking. _  
  
“Mercedes,” he began softly. “This is going to sound really stupid, but I hope you’ll hear me out.”  
He hated himself for rambling, for trying to fill the silence beyond her frightening crying, but it was all he had left to give to her.  
  
“When Dimitri and I were kids. When I was a ward, stationed there at his father’s keep, I’d sometimes wake up early in the morning—like way too early in the morning— to the sound of branches snapping.” He closed his eyes. The sound was almost there again, in the back of his mind. “And I remember, looking out the window, and seeing Dimitri standing below the high-walls, just beyond the court-yard, and he’d be taking these huge, heavy looking branches, and, again and again, he’d slash them as if they were twigs against the training dummies.”  
  
Again, Sylvain wavered, rambling and sad and wanting her to know the rest. “And I, like, never understood what he was doing, because those branches, they broke _ every _ time, _ every _ swing, he was relentless, it felt like he was never going anywhere with whatever he was practicing. But he didn't stop until they were all broken. And then he’d just...walk away.”  
  
Mercedes took a breath against his chest. She seemed quieter now, and Sylvain hoped against hope that maybe his voice was helping her through her panic, somehow.  
  
“I never really got why, but I was fascinated by it, by the question of what he was doing, why he was doing it.” He worried here, a soft edge to his pause. “Mercedes, I’ve never told anybody, but I tried to copy him one time. I thought...he was doing something, I don’t know, important, and so I woke up early, long before he ever would, and I went back to those broken branches, I stared hard at the dummy, and I took my own swing at it.” He faltered again, this time into laughter, but it sounded sad and low. “I picked the biggest branch I could find, the heaviest one, and I threw all of my weight into it.”  
  
Mercedes felt Sylvain shake his head against her hair, chiding himself in the memory.  
  
“I broke every bone in my right hand. _ Instantly. _ And later? When Dimitri asked me what had happened? I told him—I told him that I had broken my fingers climbing the trellis to nearby girl’s court-room. And, you know Dimitri, he never really questioned me on it. So I got away with it, but the truth is I just really wanted to understand what he was doing. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.” He slowed. “I didn’t feel any different, there wasn't some divine revelation. I was just a stupid kid standing with broken fingers around an unbroken branch.”  
  
He swallowed.  
  
“But...then I realized something. Dimitri, he was _ just _ like that branch. He didn’t bend. He was like a stone on the inside, and it’s strange, because, you know, the hymns and the fairey-tales and the words in those books, they don’t _ teach _ you that people can be like that. They—they tell you that you’re hard on the outside and soft and human on the inside, but, I couldn't help but wonder, what if Dimitri had been born differently? Not in a bad way, just an unknown way, a reunion between stone and flesh at his heart. Was it wrong to be stoic on the inside, too? I mean, just look at the professor! Unable to break, unable to bend, and to grow compassion outwardly, as if it was something he had to learn to accept? Something that wrapped around the layers of all of that stone and anger…”  
  
Sylvain stopped. His voice had gone watery, too, and he felt like he didn’t deserve to cry with Mercedes, someone who had despised him for plenty of good reasons, someone who had been physically hurt by Dimitri, but he couldn’t help it— his best friend— his _ best friend _ was still inside of that corpse of a person, and he could see it!  
  
He could _ see _ it.  
  
He just couldn’t reach him.  
  
He found his pacing again, with Mercedes’s breathing light against him, helping him move forward.  
  
“Dimitri never noticed the way girls looked at him, but, I mean, they’re _ wild _ for that kind of thing; the sensitive kind of man, the kind the show a softness first, before anything else, and that, that was Dimitri all over, but.” Again, Sylvain hoped he was helping. Hoped that he could be understood what he meant as he said: “...I always _ feared _ for him. I always feared that once a girl got too close, if she could see through the thread-bare softness that had hidden all the pain he carried, that raw wild anger he couldn’t let go of. Was there a girl that could love someone like that? Could he ever find her, ever allow her to get that close without shame?”  
  
Finally, Sylvain stopped his speech. The memory was long over, and, for all of his wasted breath, he felt ever smaller in Mercedes’s arms.  
  
“I am so, so sorry, Mercedes.” Sylvain finally ended. “I really am. About everything.”  
  
Mercedes moved, gently, and her light eyes seemed to stare hard at Sylvain’s face before her expression changed, softened somehow, and she looked as if she could believe in him.  
  
“...Thank you, Sylvain, for telling me all that you did.” She weakly moved her arm, swallowed the pain, and cradled it into her lap. “...I wish to see Professor Manuela but…” she hesitated, and Sylvain tilted his head to wonder what possibly could be stopping her now. “No one else must know of what happened. Please.” She then used the full force of her eyes over Sylvain. “I’m scared for him, too.”

Yes, Sylvain agreed silently. He helped her to her feet, and helped to hold her wounded arm as steadily as he could, trying to relieve the pressure of its weight against the pain of her shoulder. 

He was scared. He was out of his mind scared of what had happened, what could have happened, and the slowly growing tension of Dimitri’s inability to heal. If the word had gotten out that Mercedes had been so mercilessly attacked...it would be over.  
  
Dimitri would be punished for a crime he couldn’t remember committing.  
  
And if _ Felix _ were to find out?  
  
Sylvain closed his eyes.  
  
Yes. This had to stay between them. At that, they could at least agree.  
  
“I, ah, I won’t tell if you won’t?” Sylvain said to her, a small hope inside of his voice that Mercedes wouldn’t give up quite yet, even if Dimitri didn’t deserve it, even if, perhaps, he still needed time. He was scared and he was damaged and he was lost...but he wasn’t gone, not just yet. Sylvain could see it. He could see it every time he looked at Dimitri.  
  
He just hoped Mercedes could see it, too, through pain and anger, through the regret of trying to help.  
  
She held her head up quite higher, that quiet dignity returning to her with each step.  
  
“I agree with you, Sylvain.” Her light eyes looked to him but her tears had disappeared. “And this isn’t over. Not yet.” She turned to stare at the long path ahead of them. “I can feel it.”

* * *

  
“Annette?” A voice came from behind her door. Annette turned, setting aside the chipped tea cups she had salvaged off of a broken merchant’s wagon. They often leaked and the tea leaves clumped easily at the bottom, but they were at least a set that her and Mercie could share.  
  
“Yes? Come in. The door is unlocked.”  
  
A rough pause. The knob turned, froze, and then completed its rotation.  
  
It was Felix, unsure at the frame of the door, with his dark eyes already over her.  
  
Annette wiped her hands over her clothes. Her palms started to sweat, hoping that he’d be there, and now he was, and she felt her heart pounding just to see him.  
  
And, then she kissed him.  
  
It was not delicate or well-planned, just suddenly her arms wrapped tight around his neck, giving a little jump as she aimed for his lips, and Felix had smiled, exposing teeth against them, against how excited she was, and he nearly forgot to kiss her back. But she continued, her lips firm, closed, and he gave a laugh at how air, apparently, did not matter to her. Perhaps it was due to all the magic inside of her. Felix wouldn’t dare to say he would have minded Annette’s lips on his mouth for all time.  
  
“Felix,” her voice was breathy with nerves. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m terrible at kissing.”  
  
But Felix didn’t respond. Annette always talked too much. A lot of the professor’s crew did, honestly, but why use any more words? He’d only thought about this moment all day.  
  
He took his hand and gently held her face. A thumb traced over the edge of an earlobe, newly exposed through her red hair. It was small and perfect, much like the rest of her, and he moved to place his mouth over it, to gather his breath inside the shell of her ear until he would be the only sound she could possibly hear. That was what he wanted. He wanted Annette to stop thinking and stop talking and let him kiss her skin until it was pink, until she was sick of him, her head thrown back in laughter or pleasure, both, so he could move on to her neck.  
  
And then Annette placed her fingers along the waist of his trousers, and Felix felt the world halt. They slipped over his belt, into the fabric, and explored, the briefest tips of her fingers, as if looking for a secret key to open them.  
  
Now, it was Felix’s attempt to control his breathing. “Uhm.” Half a sound, barely a real world, and how did she do this to him so quickly?  
  
She held her blue eyes tight to his face. She’d started pouting, just a little, and Felix felt his heart stutter. Her fingers kept moving, it was hard not to laugh, it sort of tickled, and so he crept forward again, allowing his own exploration, getting that cute mouth on his.  
  
He collected her lips against his, closed at first, but then he felt her tongue, pink and warm, dart between his lips. It was so fast, he almost wondered if she’d actually slipped him tongue at all, but then she did it again, and again, and he opened his mouth to allow her inside. It was hard, very hard, to not completely overtake the kiss back into her mouth; he knew he had the power to do so. She didn’t glow pink for any reason than when he flustered her speechless.  
  
Annette’s fingers took on a more fantastic dance. She had now moved to touch at the top of his hips, and when she pushed her fingers down, nails into the skin, Felix had to fight to keep control of his mouth, because she was aiming to move lower, and he didn’t quite know exactly where this was going, like something out of one of those terrible, miserable fairey-tale books, not that Felix read those, not that he cared about something petite and romantic as that, but she was definitely moving awfully fast to grasp more of his naked skin—  
  
And then, her fingers pushed into the blackened bruise along his hip, and he nearly bit her tongue, a reflex to the pain, dashing the moment into agony. He ripped her away from him at once, desperate to get her hands off of the bruise.  
  
He pulled in a large breath through his nose. Then another.  
  
Sweat had collected along the back of his neck, uncomfortable and sticky, and suddenly, he felt a little sick. He hadn’t paused to think the pain would have been that intense, but it was, sincerely, and his head swam at the idea of her accidentally touching him there again, and if he could stand to be pressed against too tightly.  
  
A hot hiss of air pushed into Annette’s mouth; she could feel it on her teeth, over her tongue, and she startled back. When she looked up at his face, he looked almost green.  
  
“Felix? Did I hurt you?” Her hands, too, have flown away with her, robbed of her fun pulling at the hem of his uniform’s waist, controlling exactly how much of his body she wanted on hers.  
  
Felix looked caught. His dark eyes closed, lids tight. He frowned, but it didn’t seem to be at her.  
  
“No, no, that was fine.” He leaned back towards her but Annette held her ground.  
  
Those blue eyes narrowed at him. He had gone all tight and pale again around his jaw and neck. She wasn’t going to kiss if it she was somehow hurting him; leave it to Felix to think that their first time together be something as awful as that. She then found her own eyes closing around a frustrated blink. Knowing Felix, he’d be into that, or something equally dumb.  
  
She told him as much, those blue eyes probing around him, as if she could sniff out where he was hurting.  
  
“I was hoping we could be,” she paused, swallowed, and corrected herself, “I mean, I was just— I was thinking, you know, that we’d known each other for a long time, and, ah.” Those dark eyes studied her closely, and she felt the words felt wrong and crude and terrible, but what else could she possibly do? Did she have to scream it out for the whole damn monastery? “...I want to sleep with you.”  
  
The corner of his mouth turned up. Ugh, she hated that as much as she wanted to kiss him for doing it. “This morning, we basically did. Until you left.”  
  
She blushed. “Shut up, Felix.” Then, her eyes averted away. Her heart felt like it was beating so hard, so fast, she could just die now, forget the sex. She pulled a page from his book, snapping it into place between them. “You’re making it weird.”  
  
He was just...staring at her. And she tried to control the tightening of her lungs, trapped there, like a tiny helpless rabbit at the mercy of a wild dog. His eyes then suddenly softened, as if he had rolled her words over his tongue several times, and realized what they tasted like.  
  
“You...want to do more than sleep?”  
  
“Do you _have_ to make me say it?” Her expression looked cute and panicky, and she gave a little impatient whine. “Again?”  
  
He looked pleased. However, even happy expressions always came off a little too pointed over that smarmy mouth. “I’m just surprised.”  
  
“And what does that mean?”  
  
His mouth, then, softened too. “You just always surprise me.”  
  
The way she looked was absolutely better than a thousand drunk fantasies he had imagined over the years. He loved the way that warlock uniform clung to her, emphasising the width of her hips, how the neckline swooped down to showcase the expanse of pale freckled skin so close to her breasts. He never had time to look at her on the battlefield as much as he had wanted.  
  
But here, in her small room, Felix found that he could stare at her all he had ever wanted, and in so many ways, that was enough. And what she had done for him late last night, when he had been so completely exhausted and sore, and she had just knew him so well, hardly having to give her direction.  
  
Could it be that Annette was often lost, staring at him too? The same way he looked at her?  
  
“I was just worried, because I was touching your hips and if those hurt that usually means—” She had been talking.  
  
She _had_ been.  
  
But Felix’s heart sped up, hard and wild against his ribs, and he couldn’t stand that incredible shape of her mouth not being close to him again, and he swooped towards her, the fury of his mouth practically overtaking her words, and she battered against his chest to push him away. “Hey, you jerk, we aren’t done talking!”  
  
“What?” His eyes looked utterly shocked. His brows pulled down at her, concerned. “Did you change your mind? Dammit, Annette, that’s fine, I don’t even care if we have sex or not, could I just kiss you already?”  
  
She pulled in a muted, smug smile. There was something very, very attractive about Felix’s desperate face, hungry for her. She kind of liked to see more of that soon.  
  
She found herself pulling further back, and a little warmer when he stepped towards her, making up the distance. “So tell me what’s wrong.”  
  
“Nothing,” his stupid mouth was saying, but his eyes looked larger somehow. “I told you, I’m fine.”  
  
“Felix,” she tested.  
  
“Annette,” he returned, his voice equally annoyed.  
  
“Arh.” Her little shoulders rose up, puffed like a territorial kitten. “What do you always make things so difficult for yourself? I can fix it, remember?” She gave a little snap of her forefinger and thumb, and a tiny pulse of white magic smoked between the space. “It isn’t that complicated.”  
  
He looked down and away.  
  
Yeah. This was absolutely not how Felix had fantasized this would go.  
  
He took another deep breath. Then, he stepped away from Annette, away from that sweet perplexed look on her face. He studied his boots. He wish he had better prepared for this moment. Not just getting to so quickly have Annette, as in _all_ of her, but for the mistake from yesterday, and…  
  
She was looking at him worriedly now. Her mouth set again into genuine concern.  
  
Ugh. He couldn’t agonize about this forever.  
  
It was just….why did Annette have to know all of his broken, terrible weaknesses so _soon?_  
  
He brought a hand to his face, sighed between tight fingers, and then looked at her, his expression decidedly angry, but it was towards himself, and it was soon to be ruined.  
  
He undid his belt, sliding out the leather with a small thump over the rug, hurried and clearly annoyed. He then hitched his thumbs into the belt-loops, pulled slowly down. He kept his face away from Annette. He didn’t want to see how she might look. He wouldn’t dare just take off the entirety of his pants in front of her in such a hot tempered way, as if he would figure out a better way to curl into a ball and die, but he continued to ball the fabric just far enough to show off his hip bone, and a little more skin, the muscle cut tight into a “V” of his lower abs.  
  
It didn’t take but a moment for her to see the bruise. It looked black now. Black, purple, and it was quite large, as if it had spread during the night. It looked as if it had wrapped around the entirety of his hip, ducking into his thigh, as it seemed to cling darkly along the indent of his bone, the rest of it hidden in his now folded down fabric, held tight between the strength of his fingers.  
  
“Felix,” she had scooted closer, her eyes wide and blue, and she lifted her hands delicately, as if she had already wanted to heal him without permission. “How in the world did that happen?”  
  
He sighed. It was too late to lie. “Dimitri. He panicked last night and attacked me.”  
  
She made a small, scared noise in the back of her throat. A noise that made Felix feel as if he had failed her somehow. “I...I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have been so, um, so touchy with you, had I known.”  
  
Goddess, was she apologising for being turned on? Felix closed his eyes. The pain wasn’t even the worst of it. Now came the hardest part.  
  
“I...I don’t want you to heal me. Not right now, anyway.” His voice took on a nervous jilt.  
  
“What?” She looked almost furious. “Why not? Are you kidding me? Felix, that’s stupid.”  
  
“I know, I know.” He swallowed thickly. Annette could watch the strain of his neck muscles ripple in the movement. He met her eyes for only a heartbeat, before he dropped them towards the floor. “Listen.” He paused. “White magic messes with me.” The words felt clipped, barely able to make from his lips. “Like last night.”  
  
“I won’t use a lot.” Annette argued, but it was mostly a bluff. That bruise looked bad. _Really _bad. She bit her lip. She wasn’t even sure if she knew enough magic to numb it, let alone heal it entirely. It really looked like a job for someone with better skills, like Mercie.  
  
“Wait. I’m not finished.” Felix blushed. He felt the heat race up to the points of his cheekbones, over his shoulders, under his arms; he might as well have full-body blushed as easily as Annette could, except it wasn’t cute, he wasn’t cute and this wasn’t cute and he truly, absolutely hated himself to confess to her, yet again, another stupid secret.  
  
Annette felt her heart skip. How did last night feel more intimate than actually touching Felix now? It was like a different time, a different atmosphere. A different Felix. One that clearly didn’t feel as comfortable as he had been with her then. She felt a pang of sadness move through her. She didn’t mean to make him look so unnerved, so un-Felix-like.  
  
“Okay?” She prompted gently. “I’ve been told that white magic makes non-magic users feel weird. It’s not that unusual, Felix.” She moved closer, her hand outstretched. 

She had nearly touched his hip; she honestly had to stop herself from not concentrating too intensely over the beautiful, muscled way his body looked, almost pristine; Felix was way too dense and real and just beneath the pads of her fingers that Annette could bother to remember what those stupid dirty knight books had taught her, if anything, about what a real person looked like just below the waist. Without thinking, she began her small healing spell, stretching her fingers out to his skin, but Felix had bent down to meet her hands. “Wait, Annette.”  
  
Annette blinked up at him. She felt snapped out of a hypnosis. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Felix bit his lip. She blinked again. She’d never seen him do _ that _ before.  
  
His entire face looked completely devastated.  
  
“...I’m sure that’s normal for most people, but for me, it just makes me…” He had looked away from her again, almost...scared. “Tired. Really tired, like, I can’t think straight kind of tired, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel most times, but mainly, what I’m trying to say is...it makes _ all of me _ tired.”  
  
Those big blue eyes stared at him. Felix imagined the floor opening up and swallowing him whole. Her lips were amazing, her eyes were perfect, but this was the end, and that was good enough for Felix, shame basically burning him from the inside out, as he waited for her response. He prayed she’d use that overly eager brain of hers to get what he really, really didn’t want to say.  
  
“Oh.” She huffed. Then. _ “Ohh.” _ _  
_  
Felix dropped his face into his hands. He hated _ everything. _  
  
“Felix,” her voice sounded relieved. “You had me totally freaking out. That isn’t a big deal!”  
  
His fingers cinched over his eyes. He couldn't look at her. “No. None of that. Please.” This was too horrible. “Please, stop talking.”  
  
And...she did, thankfully, as if she’d realize that no amount of patronizing was going to make Felix feel any better. Annette again, felt bad. She was only trying to help. It really wasn’t a big deal. So, they couldn’t have the stupid, wrapped around the quilt of her bed, toes curled-up kind of sex she had maybe sort’ve planned out for the entire day. That wasn’t so bad. She still had Felix, and she could still touch his skin, and nibble at his throat, and that, that was _ a lot _ of what she really wanted anyway.  
  
“So…” She let the word drag out into the heated quiet. “We could try something else?”  
  
His face was still hidden by his hands. Clearly, he needed a minute to recover from confessing to his brand new, possible girlfriend that sometimes, if he was too fucked up on magic, his own cock couldn’t work. “Um. Sure. Whatever you wanna do. Go for it.”  
  
Annette went pink. Cream and strawberries, all through her freckled skin. Felix side-eyed from the gaps between his fingers. Her chest, the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, and if, behind that silk, they had gone pink, too. Annette was thinking and thinking hard. It was akin to the face she had made during the professor’s lectures years ago...and yet, distinctly...indelicate.  
  
He lifted his head. Felix watched her swallow hard. Her voice took on that high, cute flutter. “...I have an idea.”  
  
“An idea?”  
  
“Mhm,” she hummed, but the tune felt slightly off-key. Weird. “But you are going to have to listen to me, or else, uh.” She paused. Her cheeks turned completely red. “You have to listen to me, Felix, so can you promise me you’ll at least try to be good? As in, you won’t fight me the entire time?”  
  
Woah. Felix blinked at her, wide and, a little turned on. She sounded...pretty demanding about it, whatever this idea was.  
  
“Good?” He threw back his head to laugh. “What? Am I usually so stubborn?”  
  
“Uh, have you met yourself?” Annette quipped back.  
  
“So, what do we do?”  
  
“Sit down, you know, get comfortable.” Her face was still a strikingly delightful shade of rose. With how terribly nervous she looked, the way she even shook, Felix felt himself relax a little under her gaze. Maybe...the stupid bruise hadn’t ruined everything? He was pretty curious about that look in her eyes, as she scanned him.  
  
And damn, the way she looked at him. Her lips slightly parted, and her hair already a little messed up. She made Felix feel like he could be...desirable.  
  
It made Felix feel whole; his entire heart suddenly heavy inside of his chest.  
  
“Okay.” He leaned back towards her bedroom wall, slid down, and padded at his lap. He eased his legs out long over the rug, kicking away his belt. “Come sit with me, then.”  
  
“No.” Annette said at once.  
  
Felix titled his head at her. “No?”  
  
“Are you going to listen?”  
  
“I can object to this, Annette. I’m...concerned?” Felix allotted.  
  
“Ugh, _ Felix,” _ she buffered again. She pulled herself forward, tapped at his knees, and pushed his legs apart so that she could sit in the space between his thighs. “Okay. So, I’m thinking, you know,” even her hairline looked delicately sweaty, and Felix wondered if she’d taste of salt or her rose perfume. “We could just be here for a while.”  
  
Her hand landed lightly over his knee, and then she crawled forward to press herself tightly against Felix’s chest, her mouth once again to his, already tugging at his bottom lip, excited and messily kissing into his mouth. He couldn’t resist her body. He wanted to be ensnared in her; it felt impossible to redirect, impossible to pull away: he wanted her skin, her breath, her mouth, her hair, every inch of it, he had to have all of it or nothing. 

His body shifted, and Annette felt herself being pushed towards the side of the wall as he attempted to change their position, as if she was going to be the one trapped between him and the wall, and that was so not going according to her plan.  
  
“Damn it, stop _ moving, _ Felix! I feel like I’m going to hurt you again!” She grabbed his arms tight around his wrists, and lifted his arms up, in a haphazard attempt to pin Felix to her bedroom wall. She pushed forward, suddenly sprawled over his lap and chest, and, surprisingly, Felix allowed his arms to be held hostage there, his face so close, and his dark eyes drinking in her form.

“Oh,” His face was impossibly close to her ear; he spoke, and his dark voice moved through the loose strands of her hair. “So, the kitten wants to play it rough, huh?”

Her tiny nose wrinkled, affronted. "Hey! Kitten? I’m nothing like a kitten, Felix.”  
  
If anything, he was like a cat, all watchful and temperamental, easily annoyed, and, well, that tongue of his, basically helpless against her neck from the night before. He was _ all _ talk.  
  
“Heh. Beg to differ.” Felix’s dark eyes poured over her, and, for a moment, she really did feel as if she couldn’t do what she was about to do.  
  
“So, if I’m a kitten, what does that make you? Some big, bad, lone wolf?”  
  
He frowned at her, thinking, and then smirked. “I kind of like the sound of that.”  
  
“You’re such a bastard, Felix, honestly.”  
  
He laughed, loud and clear, the white skin of his throat thrown back, exposed for Annette alone, and it made her mouth water. His eyes had even closed at the joke of it, and Annette felt that door around her heart opening wider and wider.  
  
But then, she wanted it. And nothing was going to stop Annette from what she wanted to do.  
  
“Make your move then,” his teeth flashed in a white, snide smile. “You gonna prove it to me, kitty-cat?”  
  
“Okay. Watch this kitten scratch you then, if you think you’re so _ bad,” _ Annette teased, but her voice had gone smokey as she dragged the word ‘bad’ in one long, tempting breath. She then pushed the weight of her frame against the fabric of his trousers, aiming for exactly where she figured he’d like it most, and, almost without pause, just a simple push and pull, she felt Felix’s body full-shudder against her, his breathing now tight inside of his chest.  
  
Felix’s breath stuttered. At once, his arms pushed back against the make-shift cuffs of her fingers, and Annette rolled her hips again, a slow slide straight against his good hip and lower, demanding the heat of her body travel the length of his stomach, hips, straight down into his prick. He shifted against her, unable to reach back without her adding the weight of her body back down over his lap, and, upon realizing this, Felix let a sigh of hot air from his nose, understanding her little trick.  
  
The room suddenly felt at least five degrees hotter, and Annette damned herself for not showering before attempting to mount Felix like some ornery, untamed pegasus. But that dark engaged look inside his eyes made Annette want to jeer him even more. Felix thought he could outsmart anyone, take anyone down, he was so cool and so hot and so perfect and Annette was going to unravel him down to his bones, just like she had imagined many, many nights before.  
  
She moved again, this time shifting up,to straddle Felix properly, although she used her knees along the flooring to balance her weight away from the bruise of Felix’s hipbone, a careful act that kind of hurt her kneecaps, but that only added to her drive to get Felix’s body to squirm under her, desperate for better excess, harder friction. It was a little like a dance, a lot like a slow grind, and it gave Annette a sharp wonderful thrill when Felix’s mouth tightened in concentration. He had echoed her movements with his own, the distinct pressure of an arousal rising to meet the inside of her thigh.  
  
Another hot breath against her ear, and she could tell he was starting to get where she was going with this. He moved his hips back against her, sliding the tough fabric against the skirtline of her dress, and then, in one quick move, he gave a little buck so that the dress-line lifted up and spilled down her open thighs, revealing her panties underneath, little daisy-chained cutesy ones that perfectly measured her hip bones and showed off the soft inner flesh of her thigh.  
  
While the room felt hot, his voice was perfectly cool, lips pointedly snug against the shell of her ear. “You sure about this? It’ll be hard to reach you from this angle.”  
  
Annette smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about me getting off on this.” Her voice turned cold, dropping into a closed mouth whisper to his mouth. “Because you’re gonna be begging me to touch you.”  
  
Those dark eyebrows shot upwards in complete disbelief. _ “I’m _ gonna be begging _ you?” _  
  
“Ah-hah,” those blue eyes sparkled at him, playful and determined. “Begging, like a dog.”  
  
His voice only felt deeper inside of his chest. “I thought I was the wolf in this equation.”  
  
She poked out her tongue at him. “You. Wish.”  
  
She placed her mouth back on his and he accepted her greedily. His tongue made short work of the defense from her lips, hot into her mouth, as if he could find some kind of foothold inside of it. Again, his hands shifted lower but Annette steadied their strength, forcing them up higher. He grunted at the resistance, his shoulder muscles stretching stiffly along the wall.  
  
Annette took her chance. She grinded herself hard, in one quick motion to turn the fabric against the growing erection beneath her, tempting him with the slow flickering heat that had entered into Annette’s own body, low into her stomach.  
  
“Annette,” Felix’s voice felt hotter, higher, like someone had thrown ice water directly over his back, and he twisted hard beneath her, edging to get closer, to feel her body, her thigh, something, anything, to grind against. “I’m not gonna beg you.”  
  
He was saying that, sure, but he was telling her this through perfectly clenched teeth. Not even the impatient, wanting strokes of her tongue was allowing her entrance into his mouth; she felt the hard wall of his mouth move, too, ever so slightly, as if he had subconsciously taken to grinding his teeth with every hot, planned push of her lower body over his lap.  
  
Annette then dropped one hand, collected his wrists into her other hand, and moved her hand down. She trailed it gingerly through his loosening hair braid, the dry, swallow heaving of his chest, and, finally, she dipped the pads of her fingers agonizing slow into his pants; When Annette finally reached the perk of his cock, fingers hot and cupped tightly so she could edge the pressure down the length of him, the budding moan that had been building inside of his chest seeped through the gasps of his teeth.  
  
“Uh.” At once, Felix’s mouth eased open. She allowed the moment to take him, to defocus away from her, and she could feel his lower half tremble from the sudden intense pressure, slick and hardening, under her hand. Again, he shuddered against her, but the words couldn’t follow. “N’n.”  
  
She licked a thin wet line up his entire neck until it reached his left ear, tasting the droplets of sweat that had beaded down to trickle into his hairline.  
  
“Do you want my hand on you?” She then dropped him, and the sudden lack of pressured caused Felix to buck, hard, as if he couldn’t control his hips any longer, and Annette’s small frame practically leapt with the movement. “Or my hips?” At this, she sank the weight of her own lower body against his lap, teasing the head of his cock with a quick, jerkish movement all of her own design, allowing a bit of heat and wetness from her panties to dampen the fabric, arched against every twitch from the desperate, weakening rutting of his hips, opening to meet her half-way.  
  
“Uhh,” Felix answered, more guttural sound than any preference. But Annette didn’t like that. She wanted words, and by the Goddess, this boy would give her some, even if he had to scream for it.  
  
She had brought her hand back over him, and Felix whined, thin and low, as if he’d won a prize, something good that she wouldn’t take away from him. She thumbed at his head, feeling the slick wetness of pre-cum, and she used it to smooth her hand down the rest of his cock, savoring the way Felix’s shoulders and arms had locked into place, as if her hand had turned him to stone, before she released him again.  
  
Annette then felt her body tremble from the force of a noise: A growl ripping itself from the depths of Felix’s chest.  
  
At once, Annette used her free hand to take back his right arm from her now-aching fist that had long been struggling to combat both of his arms. She lowered her mouth back to his ear, licking around the soft skin of the lobe, sucking gently, as if trying to sooth him.  
  
“Are you angry that I’m not touching you?” Her voice was sweet and low, but her hips moved roughly against him, this time smacking briefly at his bruise, and Felix couldn’t hold back the small whimper that escaped his open mouth. “Do you want more?”  
  
“N’no,” Felix rushed the word, bold and wavering, and not nearly so stable inside of his mouth.  
  
“No?” Annette purred into his ear. She let go of his right arm again, smooth back down through his hair, and gave the back of his head a low tug. Felix felt his entire body suddenly buck, a string for a kitten to bat at, and he couldn’t stop her, he didn’t want too, because that clever small hand had dropped his hair to returned to stroke at his cock, and he rumbled again with the relief of it, churning the blood and adrenaline burning lower and lower, the hot white pleasure starting to build behind his skin.  
  
This made Annette giggle, but the sound felt dark and insidious against his mouth. “You’re so stubborn. Why don’t you just tell me what you want, Felix?”  
  
Felix couldn’t resist dragging himself against her hand, as if he could somehow manage the weight of her on his lap and buck against her fingers alone, but he honestly couldn’t. The denial of any satisfying pressure was driving him mad; he couldn’t rotate between those perfect, grinding hips and the measured drag of the pads of her fingers over that tugged at him, toyed with him mindlessly, as if his gasps and half-choked sounds were the only thing she wanted, and _ it wasn’t enough, it just wasn’t fast enough, _ and he tried to tell her so, but her tongue was in the way again, bullying his tongue back into her mouth, opening and wet and sucking all of the air away from him.  
  
Again, Felix’s small moan fell into her mouth, heady and low.  
  
Annette could swallow his pleasure down deep inside of her. She could drown in it.  
  
“If you don’t tell me what you want, then maybe you don’t like my hand on you.” She sing-songed the whim, as if she was genuinely confused as to what Felix wanted, but Felix knew, he just fucking knew, she couldn’t keep him like this forever, and her hips returned to replace the sloppy uncoordinated grinding of his.  
  
Her hand went away again. She did as she threatened. Felix’s breathing had gone so completely swallow, Annette briefly wondered if he’d pass out from a lack of air, but every small, barely contained gasp of air kept her teasing going.  
  
“Say it,” she hushed into his ear. His eyes were open again, staring into her, through her, perhaps not even aware she had spoken to him, and Annette felt jaded, as if he was running away from her, and that, that wouldn’t do at _ all. _ “Tell me you want me to touch you, Felix.”  
  
“Can’t. Won’t. No.” Only three words, and they weren’t the special kind good dogs used to get their pets.  
  
“Won’t you?” She didn’t mean to moan herself, but his own grinding was starting to jerk into the soft meat of her thigh, and the vibration felt like fire beneath her. She had pressed her entire body, heavy and constantly moving against him, somehow just close enough to grind against his waist and the blinding heat building inside of him, and then away, leaving him alone and trembling, lost between the moments of when she’d return to him, here to touch him again, and he wanted her to stay so, so, _ so _ badly. It was maddening. It was cruel. And she just kept grinding against him, again and again, backing him into the wall.  
  
His lips had closed now, swallowing the low sound that he wanted to make, but Annette’s pink tongue was measuring her own way into his mouth, prying open all of the tiny sounds of pleasure he was hiding from her. She liked it when he was loud. His shallow moaning and short-stopped breaths were _ everything _ to Annette. Why didn’t men want to be loud?  
  
She had forgotten that she had let one of his hands slide, too concerned with teasing him. He’d gotten one of his hands loose. And, with a low moan, he dropped his own hand down low, inching towards the waist of his pants, nearly there, and he was so close to touching himself before Annette caught him. She pulled his hand back up with a steady movement, as if she wanted for Felix to feel the wall she was riding him against, to know that there was nothing, nothing about the situation that she wasn’t controlling,  
  
The words felt stuck inside of his throat. “You won’t touch me,” he shivered again as he felt Annette’s breast push tightly against his chest. “So why can’t I touch myself?”  
  
“Because I don’t want you too, that’s _ why.” _ She had tightened her grip. His shoulders burned at the strength of her arms, too tired to try to reach for himself again, but she wouldn’t touch him, Sweet Sothis, why wouldn’t Annette touch him?  
  
He whined under her. Him, Felix, whining, the drawn out song of it desperate, needy just for her, for her hand, or her body, or her mouth, anything, everything.  
  
There was a loud thud that accompanied that beautiful sound. Annette had to use most of her upper body strength to keep Felix’s arms in place. His arms had nearly gotten loose as he frantically tried to take his body against hers, but to no avail.  
  
He was pinned.  
  
He was pinned and hot and uselessly thrusting against her, stabbing as his own bruise, and she was there, too much, not enough, her mouth against his mouth, lapping at his moans, fingers through his hair, the weight of her bum against the bobbing of his erection, friction on fiction on fiction, and he was going to die in this moment, with his arms held high above him, unable to move, unable to fight her, shivering and nearly whimpering into her chest, words babbling, stuck and sticky and impossible to get out of his mouth, just a single, pounding, senseless want that he needed, he needed, he had to have, or he was going to explode. 

“Annette, Annette,” His mouth was hot against her now, scrabbling with his tongue up and down her skin, often so close that she could feel the sharp outlines of his canines, hovering over the pressure point of her neck. His breathing was raw and heavy, as if the air was sucked out of the room and he was now a man, dying, shivering against her, the strength of his entire body barely enough to hold him back from throwing her back down over the rug and pinning her under him, his to completely devour. He pulled the flesh of her neck into his mouth, sucking at her skin as if that could fall away and reveal all of the weight and pressure and fiction he needed, his body begging for it.  
  
_ Yes, _ Annette found herself grinning into the pulse at his head, faster and faster and faster as she increased the rhythm of her hand around him—she’d give him this, he had fought her for far longer than she thought he could go—all jokes and snickering from Dorothea that no man truly had the stamina they boasted to have— but Annette found it so extremely, fascinatingly, heart-poundly sexy to watch Felix unravel beneath her hands in a completely new way. 

Her mouth pulled into a delighted, impossibly large smile at the sight of Felix in hyperventilated hysterics, so absolutely ravenous to be stroked.  
  
His jaw cracked. She absolutely could hear the sound of the muscles tight and pulsating inside of his jaw, as if he couldn’t hold back the sound any longer. He rutted against her, a wild thrash that competed for Annette’s hold over him. A loud thrust had caused his entire back to rise off of that wall, but, with more force than even Annette knew she had inside of her petite body, she used the weight of her body to counterbalance Felix’s force, and a heavy thud crashed back against the wall, against his sweat-drenched undershirt, his back curled in a pathetic attempt to reach her, his long arms twisted back up over his head; his own breaths shivering for escape from her grasp, but she had forced him back against the wall, hers to control, only hers to tell when it was time to let go. And she wasn’t done yet.  
  
She placed her hand back and, like a needy thing, she felt the entirety muscles of Felix’s thigh muscles harden beneath her bum, and it almost felt like she had been lifted away from him, hovering just a second more off of his lap, and he practically growled into her skin, his mouth opening as if to demand that she stop moving away, but he just groaned again when she circled her hips back over him. When she circled her hands around the head of his cock and gave a squeeze, thumb-nail moving over the groves of his shaft, Felix’s breathy groan gasped into her neck, and she could see the pressure points along the blue of his veins rising out from the tightening of his skin against her.  
  
She couldn’t help it. She increased her hold over him, almost as if she could feel the blood expanding within his skin, his orgasm slipping through with every stroke, and she had to increase the pressure of her fingers ringed around his cock, curious, as if she could perhaps cut off the wave of it from roaring too fast. Then, just to be cruel, she moved her lips to suck at a large vein that was pounding just beneath his jawline, rolling the tense salt of his skin with a ferocity as if she was the one depraved for touch.  
  
His mouth parted, his breathing more whine than words, but she swore she could make out the fine underlying of a curse. He had thrown his head back, as if now he was desperate to get her traitorous mouth away from him, his eyes closed and his mouth slack with the sensation of her squeezing ever so slightly more, rolling her hips in a steady rhythm that only just barely pressed against the grind of his building, blinding orgasm.  
  
He gasped out loud, the sound of sucked in air coming out hard and near senseless. “Nn-tte, ‘ette, I, I can’t,”  
  
She stilled her hand. “What was that?” 

Felix just about _lost his mind_ at the fact that she had just dropped him like that, without warning, and the building throb of his orgasm washed back over him like an ocean’s undertow.  
  
He crushed his face hard against her chest, his forehead and mouth digging into the hot, space between her breasts, his shoulders pinched forward just to reach her, and his felt his raw, fiery heat inside of his cock dig painfully through the fabric of his trousers, heat into heat as if he could somehow control the radiating, hot, unbearable heat between Annette’s own legs. "Go back, go back,” His dark eyes had tightened into pale slits that twitched wildly as he rocked against her, “Please, ‘ette, please.”  
  
Now Annette really had him. She slowed her hand, thrilled at the way Felix’s head weakly rolled back and forth again the wall, the sensation pouring through him; the room felt as if they had passed through a forest fire, his skin no longer his own, his bones rattling straight through him, and Annette,_ her hand_, she had moved her hand back and the feeling was almost too much to breathe through—painful and hot and undeniably _desperate for her. _His mouth opened and closed as if he could form words, as if he could beg her with just expression alone, but Annette had to have the words.  
  
She promised she’d hear those brilliant, broken whispers herself.  
  
And then, like the sudden rush of an on-coming storm, the words came. Felix, her Felix, eyes blown black and his mouth opening as if he couldn’t talk fast enough, couldn’t tell her soon enough, babbling wholeheartedly in her arms: “T-touch me, touch me, please, please, please, please,_ please,”_  
  
“Good dog,” she whispered, and she finally dropped his dropped his arms. The rest she worked in just a few short moments—now with both of her arms to take in the rest of him between her hands, and she caught the release of his shuddering orgasm by sealing her mouth over his mouth, wanting to taste the fragile moment for herself, captured behind the door of her heart forever.   
  
Then, finally, just before the over-sensitivity hit him, Annette let go of him.  
  
Felix felt as if he’d been practically tortured.  
  
His bruise pulsating from the strain, the careless moments when Annette had rocked too hard against the wound, and his arms, fuck, he felt as if he’d been chained to that wall for hours and hours. He sank into the floor, uncaring of how he looked, uncaring of the unflattering way a dampness had spread itself messily through one of the legs of his pants, and he panted, hand over the Prayers Of The Goddess, _panted _like the way Sylvain had always told him _women_ were supposed to do once the fucking was over.  
  
It was obscene. It was indefensible.  
  
It was probably the hardest Felix had ever came in his entire life.  
  
And Annette, her blue eyes drinking him in, well, she looked as if she could have levitated right out of his lap—and, giving her inclination to cheering and flaunting after she had taken down a particular hardy foe—Felix wouldn’t be surprised if she actually had at some point. She giggled again as wiped the wetness and dirt from her hands over the dress pulled up high around her waist.  
  
“Well then,” her pretty pink mouth looked swollen from the act of kissing him. “Who’s the kitten now?”  
  
“Was that,” Felix promptly ignored her jeer, nervous that she had really just did what she had done for him alone, and through the fading rush that had collided with the pain of his body, he realized that perhaps she hadn’t enjoyed herself as much as he had. “Was that good for you, too?”  
  
She hummed lightly. She reached out her hands to take his face. She could still feel the shuddering of his pulse hard under her fingers. “Definitely.”  
  
Felix could only chuckle at this, unable to deny her any longer. He dropped his head, tired and completely unable to move from his place over the floor. “Annette, the first time we get our hands on each other,” at least in a more sexual way, Felix wanted to add, but he continued on, “and I think you’re trying to kill me.”  
  
“No,” she urged carefully, but her voice felt warm and happy. “You told me I couldn’t get you to beg.” She winked at him. “It won’t always be this way; you just need to learn when to sit.”  
  
Ah this, Felix had little to defend. She had defeated him, raw and breathlessly. She was perfect. She would still, probably, absolutely, accidentally, one day kill him in an attempt to prove him wrong, but, Felix thought, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. At least he would die happy.  
  
She moved closer. Her warm breath over his face felt good; The sweat over his skin had cooled his body down, and her breathing only made him feel cooler. “So?”  
  
“Ah, so?” Felix returned, unsure of what she was after now.  
  
_ “Felix,” _ she pouted again, her lips looking extra kissable, but he just couldn’t move. “You didn’t answer me.” Her blue eyes honestly seemed to dance, gloating and minx-like, clearly enjoying herself further. “I _ said: _ Who is the kitten _ now?” _  
  
Sweet Sothis. What _ was _ this girl?  
  
He grinned at her loosely. All cute and sweaty and puddled over her floor. “Is it me?”  
  
“Good boy!” Annette praised, semi-sarcastically, into the sweaty mess of his hair.  
  
Felix gave a weak little laugh and hugged her harder. “You’re ridiculous. Completely insane. I mean, where in the world did you ever think to do that to me? Do you just enjoy taking me to pieces?”  
  
“If I say yes,” She seemed to toy with her answer. “...will you still like me?”  
  
Felix was glad he couldn’t speak as fast as he could think. What he had thought to say was a simple, honest: _ I think I’ll fall in love with you. _ He outwardly followed through with was a low laugh, an almost giddy chuckle as he said to her, quite earnestly, “I’ll definitely still like you, Annette.”  
  
She hummed again, absolutely glowing at him. “Hehe. You’re the best, Felix. We should do this again sometime.” She then eyed him closely, the peaky shade of his face. “Maybe after your hip is better?”  
  
Oh fuck, _ again? _ Soon? Like when? Like _ tomorrow? _ Felix felt himself sink further into the flooring.  
  
“Um, I’d rather like to just kiss you for a while,” Felix said faintly. He tried not to turn red. He could only hope that he could keep up with her sex drive. He had never considered himself that obsessed over it, not that he’d offer up that information to anyone that asked. And it wasn't like people asked. “If that’s okay with you.”  
  
At once, Annette softened, her lips pursed, as if a little taken back from the turn of their banter.  
  
“I’d really, really like that,” She replied softly.  
  
Felix felt his heart move, ever so gently, full inside of his chest. He felt like such a stupid, foolish, non-nonsensical, love-drunk fool. No more spit or ire or anger to be found. “Me too.”  
  
Again, Annette laughed, lifting up the creamy whiteness of her throat, and Felix marveled at her for just a moment. She then scooted over and offered her hand to him. “Need help standing up?”  
  
“Uh, no, you’ve killed me, I’m just gonna sleep here.”  
  
She looked so cute and concerned, as if she believed him.  
  
“Felix!” She whined, already moving towards him as if she’d drag him along if necessary.  
  
But he captured her hand anyways, and pulled her down against him, captured to the floor. His sore mouth was already all over that throat of hers, and he wouldn’t be giving up that skin for a long, long time. Her hair, red as a new dawn, spread over beneath his finger tips, and she offered her neck again for him to lap at.  
  
Yes.  
  
He felt as if he had already lied to himself before, too tempting in the moment to push away what was on-coming. But Felix was absolutely, already in love with her. It was inescapable, like gravity. This feeling, like fate, like a force, Here before he had ever known her, here after her, here no matter where he would go.  
  
It had taken five years to find her again. Five years, and like a heartbeat, he felt the world shift, as if pulled by destiny to be here again, war be damned. Destiny, like starlight and a sunrise, sights that had seen eons of life and that only looked towards the future.  
  
Like the blue in Annette’s eyes. Felix could finally describe it.  
  
Home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An: I also wanted to let you guys know that I am TOTALLY down to accept requests and suggestions with any of the characters, pretty much any relationship or perspective, whatever you guys might want, if you enjoy my writing style C 
> 
> I also want to tell the more delicate readers in the room that after i finished writing the felix/annette scene I promptly cleanse myself of all sin by throwing myself straight into a garbage can, but then there i was, opening up a third chapter of this wild god-damn ride, so thank you for joining me on my sinful ted-talk, turn in for chapter 3, or better yet, come into my garbage can, where we can all be trash together, sweet sweet fandom


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Felix had made a promise; not a promise to the dead, not to the living, but to that monster.
> 
> He’d kill the mad prince. Once and for all.
> 
> Alternate summary: tears tears tears tears tears tears tears tears tears (also ingrid, ashe, sylvain, mercedes, and annette are here, too)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: god this chapter just killed me. Leave me to die, fandom, just go on without me (ps. gang this chapter now has FANART, I am SHOOK)

* * *

  
_Felix had made a promise; not a promise to the dead, not to the living, but to that monster._   
  
_He’d kill the mad prince. Once and for all._

* * *

“You don’t look good, Dimitri. Not that you were ever the best at taking care of yourself.”  
  
Ingrid waited. She wasn’t sure why. He wouldn’t respond. He never responded.  
  
Still, there she stood, legs locked into some sick-kind of vigil over his bedside.  
  
She had been asked, pointedly and overly sweet, by Mercedes to bring Dimitri some water. So, here she was. She had the bowl. And the spoon. And she had bent, like a servant bowing to the shadow of a dead king, and tried to rouse Dimitri from his fevered sleep to drink. It was hardly worth the effort. He wouldn’t swallow. The water had only trickled back out of his mouth to wet the pillow. She attempted once more but that had been a disaster. She failed to realize that she had been gripping at the back of his neck so hard that he had choked out the next spoonful, the sound painful and deep, rippling the mist of droplets and sickness back over her face.  
  
And she felt nothing.  
_  
__“You’re one of His Grace’s closest, most trusted friends,” Mercedes said to Ingrid. She lifted her good arm to take Ingrid’s fingers between her own. “I think he needs you now.”_  
  
_Ingrid had turned nervously to miss her comforting gaze. It would have swallowed Ingrid whole. “Can’t Sylvain return to him? I don’t think I…”__  
__  
__“Please.” Mercedes whispered over Ingrid’s protest. “I need you to do this, if not for him, then for me? I’d go back myself if I hadn’t tripped. Please, Ingrid.”__  
__  
_Ingrid said nothing else. She simply stood, collected the bowl, and now….  
  
Now. Ingrid was talking, mainly to herself, which wasn’t anything new...but...  
  
“And what’s happened to Mercedes? Well, Sylvain’s an idiot. _Tripping? _Mercedes’ is clumsy, but a trip doesn’t rip someone’s arm from their socket.”  
  
Ingrid was entirely monotone. She felt like she couldn’t be hearing her own voice. This side of her couldn’t be real, or maybe it was all she had been holding back. How comfortable it felt to speak this way, to allow herself to be removed, without a spark of life in her eyes.  
  
“And he’s always been an idiot for covering for you. But I guess I know him too well to believe what he’s saying.”  
  
She moved the bowl and spoon away to the side-table to study her friend’s face. The paleness of his skin, snaked delicately with blue-blooded veins, brought so close to the surface, she felt like she could scratch and break them open with just the tip of her fingernails. His fever had only made him more delusional. Dimitri did not speak, but there were sounds, soft and pathetic. A few mumbled words maybe, perhaps asking for his step-mother, perhaps his dead sister’s name, if he dared to match Ingrid’s face to another person.  
  
Ingrid felt she really couldn’t do much for him. She wasn’t a healer. She had not a single inkling for magic, dark or otherwise, and she certainly would not be asking for a healer to accompany her back once more. Dimitri had always been prone to fevers when they were kids. This would pass. It wouldn’t kill him.  
  
Besides, how could a fever kill a person that was hardly alive?  
  
Ingrid felt her lips move. Was she smiling? She did not feel happy. Or scared. Or anything else.  
  
“I want you to know, you nearly broke her arm.” Ingrid told him.  
  
She leaned closer. She could feel the wave of her own hot breath over his cheek, pushed back onto her, spiteful and alone. “And I don’t forgive you for it,_ Your Grace.”_  
  
The hair on the back of her neck started to rise. It felt so good to finally speak to Dimitri like this. Why had she avoided it for so long? Why didn’t she always tell him exactly how she felt? And why stop with Dimitri? She should tell Felix, too, that she was starting to believe in him, and that when Sylvain, his dark eyes so clearly lying and lying and _lying_ about how Dimitri, this broken, sorry, inhuman person, was still there? That he was pretending to desperately love?  
  
Sylvain needed to learn a very important lesson in life.  
  
He needed to get this through thick, empty head, and selfish need to lie to people so they’d like him. He needed to let go of people. Ingrid had. She had to let go of her dreams. She had to let go of endlessly disappointing her father. She had to let go of Glenn.  
  
Glenn.  
  
He had... promised... her. He had _promised_ her he’d come back to her, when the Duscur forces that started to burn down the keep, and she had been shoved away with the rest of the women. And where did it all go? Why did it all lead to this moment, to her, standing over the corpse of her would-be king, her hands so tired and angry, and it was all just waiting for her, so perfectly fated she could_ scream. _  
  
She could scream. She could scream. No one would hear her. No one _ever _heard her.  
  
She felt her hand raise up. She felt it start to come down. Dimitri hadn’t answered her yet. She wanted an answer, she had to have an answer, she’d demand it,_ she wouldn’t be ignored any longer—__  
__  
_“Ingrid?”  
  
She jumped. She smoothly turned, a sword-man’s dance that melted out of her control, as she, Ingrid, quick and roughly, one hand flying at the dagger studded to her upper thigh in its sheath, moved to kill the voice that dared to call her name.  
  
Because it wasn’t Dimitri’s voice that had answered her.  
  
From the dark, a man walked forward—and Ingrid steeled herself. She hadn’t thought it could be _true_. She couldn’t begin to _fathom _that Edelgard could reach her long, claw-like hand into Garreg Mach from so very far away, and finally managed to reach her king. She had thought Dimitri had truly, finally, maddeningly, lost his mind when he had attacked Mercedes, _Mercedes_ of all souls, thinking Edelgard's assassins a step closer— without a second’s hesitation, Ingrid’s sword arm clashed, rough and hard, an inch from that voice in the darkness.  
  
“Speak again and I will slit your throat.”  
  
A thick, terrible noise answered her. She increased the pressure over her arm to cut off airflow. Her heart felt terribly steady. She wasn’t afraid. She couldn’t allow herself to be. She glanced backwards, towards Dimitri’s bed, just for a heartbeat, to make sure he was alright. Thankfully, there weren’t any other shadows that followed. He hadn’t even stirred at the voice, or the sound of a body being beaten back into narrow wall of the bedroom. It was just Ingrid and the assailant, and she wondered, with a sharp, wonderful coldness through her chest, how it might feel to just kill the assassin without an interrogation.  
  
The impulsive thought was everything Ingrid had been taught to find unholy. She knew fairness. She knew judgement. She knew trial, reasoning, justice.  
  
She didn’t care about any of that now.  
  
She pictured it so clearly in her mind’s eye: the edge of her dagger biting into the soft flesh of skin beneath her, the warm splash of blood pouring over her locked fingers, into her clothing, over her boots, that soft final gasp of air, trapped, pocketed, unable to cry out, and she would take this worthless creature, stare deep into its eyes, and watch what little light hiding inside die out, nice and slow, just under her hand, finally, finally gone, finally over, and it would_ finally_ be done,_ just die already, just die already, Dimitri, why don’t you just die already? __  
__  
_She looked into the man’s eyes. They were green.  
  
Ingrid’s hand went limp. The dagger wilted away from the man as a flower set to flame.  
  
“Ashe?”  
  
A force took her at the shoulders. She flinched. But nothing else came. She was just suddenly being squeezed, hard and tight, against the chest of a friend she had known for years and years. She tried to let her fingers drop the dagger. She tried. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t let it go.  
  
Ashe didn’t seem to care. He just held her tighter, closer, his face crushed into the side of her head; his nose through her blonde hair._ “Ingrid.”_  
  
She blinked. This was real; she hadn’t been awoken from some impossible nightmare. “What are you doing in here?”  
  
Ashe pulled lightly away from her before he spoke, however, he kept his arms to hold her by the wrists. He was shaking. Maybe she was shaking. Again, those large green eyes stared into her face, so green, a mirror all her own, a soft, near-touchable look inside of them, for a man that she had just threatened to kill.  
  
“Ingrid?” Ashe replied quietly. “I came here for you.”  
  
It was so strange to him. Why did she sound so far away from him in such a small, crowded room? Didn’t she know why he had come to her side? He had only admired her quiet, private strength for so long. They had shared so many books together, passages, lengthy discussions about the intentions of knighthood and legends, often to be shushed in exasperation by a passing house-mate or chased off by Alois on his pre-dawn patrol. But she looked so empty now, and tired, all that strength had just flown from her. In the candle’s glow, her skin reminded him of glass, cold and thin, a ghost he could barely see after years of memorizing her face, fading from him...soon, he would not be able to see her anymore.  
  
Ashe filled the silence. He repeated himself again. “I heard crying, so I came to look, and, um. You’re crying.”  
  
“I’m crying?” Ingrid echoed faintly. A hand reached up to touch the delicate damp skin below her right eye, then, fingertips trailed to cheek. She hardly pushed the tears away at all and Ashe felt his fingers tremble in near-overwhelming desire to take them away for her. “Oh. So I am.”  
  
Ingrid pushed them apart at once, horrified to get the dagger as far away from Ashe as soon possible. She took a step back, another, then one more. It wasn’t much space but it was all she could give. She found she still could not let go of the dagger.  
  
Ashe’s legs started to move forward all on their own. However, Ashe forced himself to stop.  
  
There was something in Ingrid’s eyes that told him to stay back. And it surprised him. Because he thought he had made the mistake in surprising her earlier. But that was over now. She knew exactly who he was and that he would never hurt her.  
  
But that hard, empty stare never left her face.  
  
It scared him.  
  
No. It was beyond that. It was beyond a fear. A fear, to Ashe, meant he was afraid of what she might do to him. Fear that she might hurt him, or even kill him, his chest dripping red, to fade softly and slowly in her arms. But he wasn’t afraid of that. Death was never a problem. He’d seen his father die and he felt like he knew death pretty well, and that, yes, while painful, it could be peaceful and not so sad.  
  
Because maybe Ingrid was fighting hard with herself and she was losing. And that was scaring Ashe. Ingrid was never meant to lose herself in this way. She was so much better than that, she was perfect, and she didn’t make mistakes like he did, like to follow her quiet cries into the dark, to call out to her like he had any right to help her. But he did. He just wanted to help. That’s all he ever wanted to do for his friends.  
  
But he had seen the flash of a horrible path flicker before him: Ingrid, dagger still inside of her hand, backing slowly towards Dimitri’s bedside…  
  
What had she been thinking before he had called her name?  
  
What would she have done?  
  
Ashe refused to believe it. She knew what was right and what was wrong. She couldn’t be like this; he couldn’t _stand_ to see her like this. Felix, Felix was a problem, and maybe Dimitri was something unknown and uncontrollable and he had done a horrible crime, but they were not Ingrid. Not one was like her, no one Ashe had met in his entire life was like her. Not Ingrid, never Ingrid, not_ his_ Ingrid.  
  
He wouldn’t let her do this to herself.  
  
“I’m sorry for scaring you.” Ashe began. “It’s a bad habit, I know. Sneaking up on people.” His eyes darted to the floor, to Ingrid’s hands, the dagger. He thought of how to get rid of it. “Did I ever tell you that’s how Lord Lonato once found me?”  
  
Ingrid stopped. “...When you broke into his mansion, right?”  
  
Ashe took a step forward. He kept his expression gentle. The dagger looked golden in the candle’s flickering. She looked so beautiful, as she always did, always had been, and he wished he had told her that sooner than this moment, when she probably felt broken down inside.  
  
“Uh-huh. Yeah, and I'd been caught trying to steal one of his books?” Another step moved him closer. Then another. “Silly, right? A boy who couldn’t read, debating stealing a book whose story he couldn’t understand?”  
  
Usually Ashe tried not to tell this story. Then, afterwards, he’d try even harder not to blush. His starving, empty, illiterate years of just trying to survive. Those weren't his finest. He’d hurt a lot of innocent people, taking bread with a wink and a rigged street-performance. His days as a roaming, reckless, selfish thief felt long behind him; Funny that it took only a moment of fear for it to come rushing back to him, easy as breathing. And to rehash it all to the person he admired more than anyone?  
  
Early in their friendship he had worried of boring her with trivialities. He originally hadn’t thought that Ingrid would know what it might be like to starve. The pain of your own stomach trying to consume you, pounding and raw, bringing you to your knees. Her eyes had told him a different story. Not just in sympathy from Hilda, or acknowledgment from Dorothea, but perhaps that Ingrid _did_ know what starving was like. Even as the daughter of a nobleman. She had mentioned, passingly, that her father’s lands yielded little food and that his need to marry her off was all he had left to save their family line. He realized rather quickly that Ingrid did know of desperation and pain; The indignity of two very different lives knocked from the hands of fate, set to meet at a sad unspoken understanding.  
  
“Do you remember the book I took? What it was called?”  
  
Ingrid met his eyes. They looked, for a moment, aware of him. _“Loog and the Maiden of Wind_…”  
  
“Yes, that was it.” He grinned, his eyes light over her. His heart hurt. She had remembered the book immediately, even after years of not thinking about it.... and she looked like she _hated_ to remember at all.  
  
He could recall those sunny days at the Academy with Ingrid, how nervous he had been to once tell her that books had been irrelevant to him for much of his life. How he had never heard the Fable of Loog the Lion Knight, or The Prayers of Saint Seiros, or even a nursery rhyme of it. But he fell in love with it all. Those stories had given him purpose long into his adulthood, and, furthermore, to find that passion inside of Ingrid. Ingrid, who didn’t judge him, not once, for how he had come to love books, like a religious longing, she didn’t care that he so shamelessly wanted to slip behind the words and disappear.  
  
“Why are you telling me this, Ashe?” Her voice sounded angry once more. His slow steps towards her halted. He had gotten too close.  
  
“I just wanted to remind you, Ingrid, that everyone has moments they don’t like about themselves. The things we’ve done wrong, someone who we’ve hurt. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be better people for it.” He smiled at her. He had to. It hurt him to smile at her so proudly when she looked back at him with such despair. “But I saw you taking care of Dimitri just now. And that is so wonderful. You’re a good friend. You’re a _good_ person.”  
  
He slowly reached for her hand, her wrist, the one with the dagger. However, Ingrid pulled away with her arm lifted backwards, all too aware of his trick. Her watery green eyes narrowed into a tight venomous glare that chased the blood away from his face.  
  
“Grow up, Ashe.” She studied him, long and silently, before she closed her eyes completely. “Stop looking at me like that.”  
  
“Ingrid,” Ashe pressed the word into a tight whisper. “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”  
  
He tried not to lie to her. That’s why he had tried stories, memories, things she knew, because this wasn’t okay. It wasn’t anything close to okay. He_ hated_ lying. But the dagger only felt closer to Dimitri’s sleeping body, and Ashe pushed away the thought of if he could not stop Ingrid in time. What he might be forced to do.  
  
...If he could himself to do anything at all…  
  
“No.” Her voice chilled him. “It’s not. It hasn’t been. Not for years and years.”  
  
Ashe knew he couldn’t get closer but he had to reach her. Somehow, someway. They had reached the wooden edge of Dimitri’s bed— to step further would only bite the cut of the frame into the back of Ingrid’s leg. Ashe tried not to panic. He kept his voice even and slow. He could do this. “I’ll show you. It’ll be better again. Soon.”  
  
He could be brave.  
  
He moved. Quick, fast, light, and his hands found her wrists. He pulled her into his chest, twisting them back to turn her entirely away from Dimitri, and, for a piercing moment, Ashe thought he felt the dagger in his shoulder; the sudden gush of warmth to cascade down and over his back, weeping openly, the floor a dark pool that he would sink down into— but it was just a thought. Because he had her locked back, although, sickeningly, the mere sight of it wanting to make Ashe scream, Ingrid’s hands had slipped and she had pulled her own dagger into her own thigh.  
  
And she was twisting it in. Deeper. Red was coming out, starting to squelch from the cut that she was sewing. Ashe felt himself begin to come apart, because he was the one that was supposed to be hurt, not Ingrid, not her, not her!  
  
“Please, Ingrid—please stop fighting me!” The plea was nothing more than a harsh whisper, so close to her ear, Ashe had become a voice inside of her, threatening to rip her apart. He shook her, hard, inside of his hands. Like a final dark miracle, she let go.  
  
The dagger dropped between them, red trickling from its long, sharp tip.  
  
He staggered them back further, kicking the dagger hard and away from them, before he crushed himself into her arms. He eyed her wound, the pulsing of blood now staining the cloth of her chainmail-skirts, her tights, her boots, his legs, his socks. He prayed it just looked worse than it was. She couldn’t have gotten too far, too deep, could she?  
  
“I’m here. I’m here.” He whispered. _“Please_, let me help you. I’m so sorry.”  
  
She had closed her eyes. Her face was pressed into his chest. She didn’t make a sound. She didn’t answer Ashe. Maybe she couldn’t.  
  
So, he just held her.  
  
“I’m so sick of this.” Ingrid finally whispered back. Her voice no longer sounded so far away.  
  
In fact, it seemed to be right next to his ear. A confession, just for Ashe to hear.  
  
“What do you mean, Ingrid?” Ashe returned quietly.  
  
“I’m so sick of being strong for _him.”_ Her voice cracked. “Doesn’t that make me a terrible person?”  
  
“No, no—” Ashe began.  
  
“My whole life. All I ever wanted was to be a knight; a right hand woman to the king. But I was born to do what: to raise kids? To be married off to whomever my father decided? And what’s worse? There was a time I was _happy _about that.” Ashe felt her fingers dig, nails first, through his shirt and into his back as she clung to him, painfully, her voice low and dark. “Glenn was...He wasn’t like all of those miserable suitors. He was funny, and charming, and kind, and nothing like Felix.”  
  
Ashe fought not to make a sound of pain. He fought to say the right thing. It felt so surreal. One moment ago, she was feeding Dimitri water—then holding a dagger—then stabbing herself—now, huddled together in blood and tears, she was talking about Felix.  
  
He didn’t know what to say. What could he possibly say to her now?  
  
“I keep thinking about Glenn; I think about what Glenn would say to me if he saw me like this.” One hand dropped. It touched at her thigh. It stained her hand completely red. She just stared at it. “The worst part is that I’m not even trying.” She pressed herself into Ashe again. The bloodied print of her hand returned to touch the back of his neck. “Felix, he can’t hide how he feels, I know he hates it, but_ he’s_ still trying for Dimitri.” Her voice flattened. “And I’m not. And I haven’t. But I still tried to hide but...but I can’t..._I can’t any longer_… not even to look him in the face.”  
  
“I’m here.” Ashe told her. His tone was one without judgement. It was all he had. It was all he could give to her.  
  
“All of my complaining about being held back from knighthood because I’m a woman, or because my family needs me to be someone else, but I can’t hide from that here. I don’t want to anymore.” Ingrid continued. She had muffled her voice into his neck. Then, when she pulled away, Ashe tried not to flinch at how the blood had lightly patterned her cheeks. She looked at Ashe, first at him, through him...at him again.  
  
She looked so angry. “So don’t tell me I’m a_ good_ person. I’m hardly that; I’m not a good knight, Ashe, because I’m not a good person, and I can’t even help someone I’ve known my entire life— someone who is basically my _brother._ And it takes me so angry that I’d rather come in here and scream in his face, then spend another day ignoring him.”  
  
Ashe debated his question but it was hard, too hard, to not talk to Ingrid as he always felt he could. She was still Ingrid. She was still here, so heartsick, so brutally filled with hate she would rather stab herself than be saved.  
  
“He was nothing like Felix, you said?” Ashe asked quietly. “Even my brother and I, we share some things. That can’t be true.”  
  
In a selfish way, Ashe was glad she didn’t often mention Glenn to him. Glenn was clearly someone Ashe could never be. Glenn was from one of the strongest military noble houses in the entire kingdom; he had been strong, talented in the ways of fighting and horseback. Ashe was terrified of horses. He was terrible with them. He often worried that they hated him.  
  
And he was Felix’s brother. Felix, who, most of the time, looked at Ashe like he would rather squash him like a bug than make small talk. And Ashe...who had stared at Ingrid for...forever...that she could maybe, someday, see him like she could Glenn. Like a proud, powerful knight….  
  
Well. Ashe wasn’t anyone’s fool: if Felix could hate him so passionately, there would have been no way that Glenn wouldn’t have treated him just the same.  
  
Ingrid always picked her moments to talk about Glenn. She kept the idea of him so...perfect. Ashed tried not to feel too jealous; It wasn’t right to envy the dead. Glenn had been a good person. A valiant knight who had died in the service of Dimitri’s father. He was someone that loved Ingrid, that made her happy, and that was more than enough for Ashe, even if he did feel ill to think about it too much, the turning of fate, that if Glenn hadn’t of died, Ingrid would be married to him, far, far away from Ashe, and…  
  
Ashe hated himself for even thinking it.  
  
Her voice shook. “I’m sorry. For what I thought. What I did. I couldn’t stop myself.” She paused, took a breath, and then sighed. “Because here, with Dimitri like this...I see Glenn, I see him in his final moments. Over and over. So close to death. I see him...fading from me…” Then, her voice hardened. “And when I see Felix...when he laughs or smiles, I see Glenn again, all over again, except he’s _alive. _And I just feel so _angry.”_ She pushed into Ashe’s skin again, blood, sweat, her tears streaking from the corners of her eyes, her nose. “He promised me, Ashe.” The strength of her sudden, ragging breath rocked his body. “_He promised he’d come back to me.”__  
_  
Her shoulders shook under Ashe’s hands.  
  
Ingrid fell apart.  
  
She sobbed and her words felt hard to understand, but Ashe, Goddess be his witness, he tried.  
  
“Glenn was going to save me. From the burden of my entire family line resting on my shoulders, my lord father’s massive debt. Marrying into the Fraldarius house was somehow a miracle, because not only did it allow my family to be happy but…I was happy, too.”  
  
“I know,” Ashe whispered faintly. “You deserve to be happy.”  
  
“When Glenn died, my dreams went with him.” Ingrid whispered. Her voice had gone still and impossibly quiet. “I just wanted Dimitri to know that. The sacrifices the Fraldarius family have made are nearly impossible to describe with honor and words of grief.” She sniffled. “It’s bigger than that. And I just wanted Dimitri to know that he isn’t the only one lost. Because I’ve felt that way since Glenn was killed, and I don’t know where I’ll ever find my way again.”  
  
_Ingrid_. Ashe felt his heart breaking.  
  
“You don’t have to be anywhere right now, Ingrid. Just be with him.”  
  
“Dimitri isn’t here, Ashe.” Every word shook from her tightened jaw. _“He’s...not...here.”_  
  
“Then be with me.” He was there, those green eyes looking into hers. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not afraid of Dimitri’s mania, or Felix’s grief, or anything else, because I want to help people. You do, too. That’s what being a knight really is. Even if you’re married and have kids, even if you’re sworn into the king’s court, even if you die before you ever got a chance to see that dream: you help people. That’s all that has ever mattered in life.”  
  
Her mouth opened. First in a sob, then, a broken laugh. “...You’re incorrigible, Ashe.”  
  
“Ah,” he struggled, the delicate balance of it, and the slowly building panic that she was maybe losing too much blood. “Please, let me help you with this.”  
  
Again, she peered at her thigh. “Oh.”  
  
“Let me help you up. Let’s leave here, okay? Let’s go somewhere else, um, maybe to Manuela.” He pushed upward on his knees to stand, lifting her at the waist to bring her along. “Okay?”  
  
She still looked quite dazed. “Okay.”  
  
They were at the door when Ingrid stopped. Ashe held her close, uncertain of what she wanted.  
  
He couldn’t let her go back into the blood, the darkness. He also knew he’d have to find someone soon to clean the room, to pretend to not see Ingrid’s blood staining a pool into the wood. Or, worse, if Dimitri would awaken before then, somehow realize what it was...what it meant...and if he would panic himself sick once more…  
  
Ashe breathed in, out. Ingrid. Ingrid needed him right now.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
She peered backwards into the dark. “I thought I saw…” She trailed off with her dark green eyes gazing at something. “Is that...a book?”  
  
“A book? Oh—that’s—that’s mine.” Ashe glanced back to the book resting along the floor, then back to Ingrid’s face. “I forgot about it.”  
  
“What’s your book doing in Dimitri’s room?”  
  
“Um.” Ashe felt his face heating up. “I...read a Dimitri few chapters of _The Knight and The Moon Maiden_. I remember it was one of his favourites from our time at the Academy.” He mumbled the rest. He felt so stupid now, his book sitting just an arm’s length away from Ingrid’s blood. What had he been thinking back then?  
  
“Oh.” She said again. But it felt more like her old self.  
  
They moved, slowly, carefully, together over the grounds. Ashe tried to ignore the small sounds of pain she made each time she moved her leg. He thought about carrying her. He thought about carrying her a lot, actually, but he wasn’t the strongest person. With her wound, he worried about hurting her further against the chances of accidentally dropping her.  
  
The grounds certainly look beautiful at night. Candles floating just above their heads in their stone candelabra. He had shared many a moonlit walk with Ingrid over the years. He had always made a point to appreciate them, to store them deep into the back of his mind, and replay their discussions, her thoughts on every legend, every knight...  
  
“There was a time. A long, long time ago, where it was discussed if the burden of my marriage should fall onto Felix’s shoulders.” Ingrid did not turn to look at Ashe. She didn’t move at all as she spoke, low and calmly, the grief sucked from her voice. “You should have seen the look of devastation across Felix’s face while our fathers discussed it.”  
  
Ashe felt his stomach drop, an invisible force to knock him to his knees at the suggestion of Ingrid being forced to marry Felix, to marry... anyone, and it made him suddenly feel so...angry.   
  
“How could they do that to you?”  
  
Ingrid’s mouth opened into a sad little laugh. “I forget, Ashe, that you aren’t so familiar with noble traditions. Well.” She gave a lift of her shoulders to shrug indifferently. “‘Noble’ traditions.”  
  
“You loved Glenn but he was gone. He can’t be replaced like that! that’s an insult to his memory. That’s an insult to you.” Ashe declared simply. It really felt so simple. And wrong. It was wrong that Ingrid’s life had turned out as mournfully as it did. And it was wrong for her to be staring at Dimitri’s face with such a harsh look of disdain. And it was wrong that he had followed her into His Grace’s room.  
  
It was wrong that she felt so sicken, so tired, that she had thought it better to sacrifice her honor as a person than allow Dimitri to go on, lingeringly, lost inside of himself, half-dead already, searching for a way out. Her best friend, a boy she had known her entire life, her prince, her_ king!_ It was all so very wrong to Ashe.  
  
But he knew it was over now. He had caught her in the fall. He’d catch her again. Every time.  
  
Dimitri had been allowed many chances. Ashe could feel that want, that need for Dimitri to live on like a hymn echoing from deep within the church, like a familial blessing. If Dimitri was allowed a second chance, so did Ingrid. So did everyone. Just the in the legendary stories. Just like Ashe had been given. Words forged from life; life re-told, melted back into words, a graceful cycle of memory.  
  
“There were so many emotions in just that _one_ look.” Ingrid continued. “I’d never once thought his face could make that many. Felix’s just so...intense, all the time, even before Glenn’s death, when we were kids. But I knew what he felt. Grief, helplessness, anger. He would be forced to marry me with his brother’s shadow at the altar, and I would be forced to marry because that’s all I ever was meant to do. I doubt Felix ever once considered that he would be forced to give up _his _dream, his wants, his destiny because his father told him to. What a life, right?”  
  
She paused again. “I wonder what that’s like, to know orders don’t have to weigh on your shoulders? Sometimes, I have actual nightmares of if we were wed.”  
  
“Are they that bad?” Ashe prompted softly.  
  
Ingrid turned to look at him. He honestly sounded hurt, his sweet voice filled with sadness.  
  
“No. In fact, some of it was really nice. But...” Her face darkened. “I know me. Even in my dreams, I can’t escape my selfishness. Because when I said ‘I love you’ to Felix, I was _never_ talking to him.” Her voice saddened. “I was talking to Glenn.”_  
__  
_Ashe felt restless hearing that. He hadn’t considered Felix’s fate so interlocked with Ingrid’s before, and, despite his jealousy, he just felt...sad. Felix deserved better than that, too, to not be so lost in the spaces his older brother had once filled. She seemed to be closer to her old self again. Ashe murmured back to her, just to see if he could coax her back to him. All this talk of Felix and marriage had reminded him.  
  
“I’ve heard a tiny rumor, about Felix lately. Do you know it?”  
  
“A gossip, Ashe?” She flexed her blonde brow up at him, coyly.  
  
He looked stricken. “I—just-pay-attention, is all!”  
  
“And you worship the ground Felix walks on?”  
  
“No,” he dragged the word, shocked, then, embarrassed. “...I mean...it isn’t obvious, is it? I just think he’s so interesting.” He grinned nervously. “He’s nothing like our books, Ingrid, but I can see it! A rogue knight, he doesn’t listen to anyone, he doesn’t care about the bigger picture, but still, he’s at his King’s side. It’s so great. And you put him and Dimitri together, just like in battle, the pure knight and the rogue knight, isn’t it just like Loog and his knight, Kyphon?! I can’t help but think about the adventures they’d tell about the both of them, one day, and—”  
  
“And where are you among these amazing legends?” Ingrid wondered lightly.  
  
Ashe’s face fell. “I...I don’t know. I’ve never thought about being there with them.”  
  
“Ashe.” Ingrid’s voice felt so gentle beside him. He swallowed again, dryly, and wondered if he had been holding onto her too tightly. “You are that legend. The real one, living and breathing, without a hint of the darkness they carry. Why don’t you see yourself guiding them, too?”  
  
“Um. Is that so.” Ashe blushed hotly. His mind went completely blank.  
  
“So, this rumor. Who’s the other name, besides Felix?”  
  
Oh, Thank the Goddess, the topic wasn’t over him anymore. “Annette’s.”  
  
_“Annette?”_ Ingrid gave a true laugh, a real one, her eyes closed in surprise. “I...don’t know how on earth that happened, but, you know, I think I could see it.” She laughed again. “I’ve never, ever, not once, seen Felix crush on anyone, so I imagine he’s going to drown in all he feels for that girl. Can’t blame him. She’s always trying to help everyone do everything. She even helped me learn my eye make-up better, you know? All the small details you think nobody else pays attention to and then she’s there like a flash…” Ingrid softened. “You know, Ashe, she reminds me of you.”  
  
His face felt like it had burst into flames. “Ah. Tuh-thank you.”  
  
Again, she laughed. Ashe hoped that she wasn’t laughing at him.  
  
They moved again. Ingrid felt less fragile in his arms. It almost felt...normal.  
  
But it wasn’t. Ashe had to know. He had to make sure she wouldn’t do anything like this ever, ever again.  
  
“Ingrid.” Ashe held her name delicately inside of his mouth. It felt like chewing shards of glass to say the rest. “Why? What did you want...back there...from Dimitri?”  
  
She thought for a moment. Another.  
  
“Do you remember that passage we talked about, Ashe?” Ingrid ducked her head, and her short blonde bangs seemed to fall like a curtain, cutting her off from Ashe. “In _The Knight and The Moon Maiden?_ When he finally gets her in his arms, but the dawn is coming too soon, and he knows that she must leave him? And—and he knows that this morning means that the army is ever closer, and he’s one hour shorter on breath? What she says to him?”  
  
“Yes.” Ashe replied tonelessly. _The Knight and The Moon Maiden_ was not a happy book, nor did it have a happy ending.  
  
“What if the story isn’t about unrequited love, Ashe? What if it is about the Moon Maiden, realizing she is a force of destiny, and she lets the knight go because it is always what she was meant to do, and no man can stand before what she is, even if she loves him. So, when she says—”  
  
“‘My duty is your death’,” Ashe answered for her, that final line of the book, the last words spoken between the knight and his only, final love.  
  
“Yes.” Ingrid said simply. “Yes. Death. It isn’t noble. It wasn’t good. But I looked at Dimitri and I think that his suffering should be over.”  
  
‘Ingrid, you can’t possibly—”  
  
“I know.” She whispered. “I never would hurt Dimitri but....what if mercy comes not from the righteous path of defeating an enemy, but by letting go of a friend? Is that the truth of helping someone in pain?” _The tighter they are loved, the harder their memory clings to the living. It is like a curse, Rodrigue had said._ “Glenn was able to finally die. I watched him. Perhaps, Dimitri wishes for that, too. And...what if he does get his revenge, Ashe? And Edelgard dies? What then?”  
  
Ashe thought. He thought for quite a while.  
  
“Then…then he can be who he was always meant to be.”  
  
She lifted her face; the sound of a brittle, empty laugh. “A king? Hah, yes, I’ve been told my entire life. The one we are _waiting_ for. The mad prince, the cruel king, forgiven because the dead have told him so. What does it matter to his friends, to the still living, just so long as the _dead _are satisfied?”  
  
“No.” Ashe said softly. “Not that, Ingrid. He can go back to being your friend. Your true friend. And you can then be his true knight, just like you always wanted.”   
  
“You always say exactly what everyone wants to hear, Ashe. You’re so much like him.”  
  
“Like..Dimitri?” Ashe had paused in his reply, his voice a touch confused.  
  
“No...like Glenn.” Ingrid replied softly. “He told me my dream could be real, too.”  
  
They were nearly at Manuela’s infirmary now. Ashe tried his best to not look back and spy the ringlets of Ingrid’s blood that marked their path.  
  
“Um.” His heart was twisting and beating, too hard and too fast. If she kept complimenting him like this, he felt like he might faint. It was a lot, what he had done, had found, had stopped Ingrid from doing, if not trying to hurt Dimitri, then maybe attempting to hurt herself. “You’re too kind to me, Ingrid.”  
  
“I hope more people tell you how great you are, Ashe. I worry they don’t say that enough to you.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Ashe told her weakly. Was he the one that was losing too much blood?  
  
They were at Manuela’s door. Ingrid raised a fist to knock against it. It opened quite slowly at first, curious to whom she had heard talking, and then she shoved at the door quickly, once she smelled the blood.  
  
_“Ingrid?” _Manuela’s beautiful face looked at once annoyed and concerned. “What happened? Oh, never mind, get in here, you’re scaring me standing like that—Ashe, go get a bucket of water for me, please, that looks—ugh, Ingrid, I’ve never known you to be so _careless!”__  
_  
Then Manuela was gone, back into the room, already mixing a potion.  
  
His arm was still locked around her waist. It was like Ashe couldn’t remember how to move it.  
  
There was still blood on her face. Her eyes looked all the more green in contrast. Ashe wished he could wipe it clean. He wished he could tell her that she was still perfect. He wished—  
  
Then, Ingrid’s mouth was on his. And his arms tightened over her, and she was there, real and soft and warm, and Ashe felt her lips tightening over his mouth. She felt so desperate to kiss him, like she had waited far too long to do this, to see him again, and that she missed him, and that she was scared, and that she was finally going to tell him that she felt the same way, and that he could be someone she wanted, and—  
  
Ingrid broke away.  
  
“I—”’ she looked in pain. She looked back at Ashe, horrified. Her blue eyes wide, breakable, and far away from him again. Tears there, tears down her face, dripping the blood into a thick, black line. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t of—I didn’t—”  
  
Then she turned away, half-dragging herself into the room, and before Ashe could reply, the heavy wood door rushed to meet him, just a half-inch from his face.  
  
And he was alone once more with Ingrid’s blood lingering over his lips.

* * *

  
Felix waited just beyond the court wall's iron gate. He studied the crawling emerald fingers of ivy along the brick walls. Every breath tasted of that dew-wet smell of rain coming like a ghost in the night. The threat of rain, the threat of ghosts. Ghosts, everywhere, to Felix, just as they had been for Dimitri. Felix felt like he was walking through them, misty skinned, along the pathways ready to catch a human-shaped figure snuffing out the waning light from the candles that lingered everywhere he looked. A strange chill accompanied him, like accidentally bumping shoulders with a shadow, but he couldn’t force himself to walk any faster.  
  
He wasn’t sure why he was taking his time now. He needed to hurry. He needed to make sure this was finally over. Before dawn. Before the patrolling of guards, or nuns, or a old schoolmate to spy on him, walking casually along the path-way stones towards Dimitri’s room.  
  
He had waited for such a painfully long time now. Weeks, months, years. He had seen the rearing of this movement like the banner of a long dead army, a mouth of smoke in the distance that only his eyes could see, drawing closer with every step. The danger in Dimitri’s presence, the darkness and willingness to die, always present, always burning behind that blue in his eyes, even in childhood.  
  
Felix had made a promise; not a promise to the dead, not to the living, but to that monster.  
  
_ He’d kill the mad prince. Once and for all. _

He wondered if the boar prince’s door would be unlocked to spare him the extra assault of breaking inside himself. Felix had found the door seemingly always unlocked so many times before, carelessness given by the patrol of whatever sorry soul had cared for the prince in a long, exhaustive chain of friends and devoted nuns. It didn’t matter to Felix.  
  
Soon, there would be no more caring, no more worrying about who that animal would attack next. He closed his eyes. He was so close. He could taste it: fear had scent, a particular bitter gloss over the tongue that must have filled the room when Mercedes was beaten, the high screaming of her voice, scorched in pain, and the echoes of being so brutalized, and it made Felix feel like vomiting.  
  
How could he be so stupid as to allow it to happen?  
  
It was _ his fault, _ after all. 

_He _had pushed Dimitri towards Mercedes._ He_ was the one that allowed Dimitri to go. _He _was always trying to...to...to force Dimitri to just..._Felix’s teeth clenched, the bone grinding bone, _unable to continue the thought.  
  
He didn’t know.  
  
He never knew what he was doing, not really, but it was _something, _and he thought, maybe, that would be enough, just enough to...end this.  
  
...The pain in Annette’s eyes. How much it had hurt him to see her lie straight to his face. He knew he could be socially dense but he wasn’t so stupid as to not realize exactly what had happened to Mercedes’ arm. This evening had been sucked straight out of a nightmare, Annette’s blue eyes red and puffy, her lips trembling when she returned from the infirmary, to tell him that Mercedes had been injured...by a fall?  
  
Annette was...she was too kind. She was just like Mercedes, and in Felix’s deepest, most hate- filled thoughts, he feared that there could have been a time where Dimitri would have attacked Annette instead, and that thought…  
  
That thought made him see red.  
  
He felt the weight of the sword within his grip. It was one of the heavier weapons he owned. His shoulders often throbbed in pain for days after he battled with it, having brought the heavy weight of the blade down again and again under the Professor’s every order; Felix, the good little soldier, he always obeyed her.  
  
He obeyed her even when he couldn’t lift it anymore, improperly, angrily, wildly stabbing the blade straight through the stomachs of her foes, splitting organs, tissue, blood across his face, in his mouth, the back-washed iron taste of it. There, Felix could give himself over to his most base instinct—to perform like a trained animal, the only thought on the next kill, the next thrill of it—and he’d bring the blade up again, high over his head, only to thrust it back down, his hands pulsing from the rippling push-back of a man’s skull as he broke through. Those final moments left in the warrior’s eyes before he dropped, then he’d find the strength to do it again, his shoulders screaming, the effort taking his soul to pieces,_ again, again! _In that moment, he was nothing more than a weapon: mindless, endless, and he was grateful for it.  
  
His fingers flexed again to hold back a shudder. The handle of the blade was weighed perfectly to counter the structure of the sword’s long edge. It could be balanced perfectly at its center, able hanging there, unable to bend, and Felix thought it best to use for Dimitri. The blade glowed a bone-like white in the moonlight as he studied it and he worried an index finger along its edge. It answered him in a blood-thin smile, the edge of the blade so sharp he couldn’t even feel the cut. Felix couldn’t help but wonder if this meant Dimitri wouldn’t feel it, either.  
  
Dimitri’s chambers were closer now, steadily rising in the pale distance.  
  
There were only the stairs now, then the door.  
  
Then the final rising of the sword over his shoulder. Then it would over. Then it would be done.  
  
Except that the door opened...and it wasn’t Dimitri that stepped outside.  
  
It was a tall figure with a shock of red hair.  
  
Felix stepped back.  
  
Sylvain stood at the door’s frame, his dark eyes leering out into the dark. Until he saw Felix. Until he saw Felix staring back at him.  
  
His eyes locked over the sword. Back to Felix’s face, his eyes. The sword again.  
  
A thousand heartbeats spilled between them, unspoken, unfelt.  
  
Of course, Sylvain would be the one to crack the silence with his voice, and so he did, with a low, desperate laugh, like punchline he had finally understood.  
  
“Attacking a man in his own sick bed, Fraldarius? I really can’t believe you’d stoop so low.”  
  
Sylvain stepped off of those short steps that led to Dimitri’s chambers. He brought a hand nervously to touch at the back of his own neck, a childhood tick that reminded Felix of another place, another time, when they had locked wooden swords and Sylvain always tried to fool Felix to take his right side, instead of his weaker left. “What would Glenn have said?”  
  
“Sylvain.” Felix’s voice felt loud between them. “Move.”  
  
“I, ah,” Sylvain dropped his arm. It fell to his side loosely. That hand was empty. And so was his other one. At once, Felix realized that he was entirely unarmed. He was unarmed and he had been waiting for him. “I can’t.”  
  
“I’ll make you move,” Felix continued. But he didn’t take a step closer.  
  
Sylvain stared at him. Then, his grin cracked opened again. “I’m sure you will.”  
  
Felix flexed his fingers over the sword’s grip. It suddenly hurt to hold. “What are you doing?”  
  
Sylvain moved again, using his arms in that easy, conversational way that Felix, Felix could never replicate, no matter how charming or relaxed he wanted to be. Sylvain was never meant to be apart of a war. He was never meant to battle or hold a blade. He was soft. He was always too soft.  
  
“I was going to ask you that same thing but…” A hand lingered between them, at Felix’s blade, and Sylvain moved to touch his own neck again. “I guess why I’m here is more complicated, huh?”  
  
“You’re protecting a monster.” Felix told him. His voice loud, growing louder. He couldn’t control his breathing anymore, couldn’t control the raw anger of Sylvain getting between the truth of it all. He was just a waste of time. Sylvain, a waste of breath, a waste of a person, always, _always in the way._  
  
“And you’re a hypocrite.” Sylvain said gently. Gently. Felix blinked at it, how soft that insult sounded. It only made him want to scream louder, higher. “That’s right. I said it.”  
  
“What?” Felix hissed back. His dark eyes narrowed into a fine point of pain. _“How?”_  
  
“You’ve told me for years how much you hated your old man ruining the memory of your brother. So, let me ask you this: what are you _doing?_ Glenn died for Dimitri, Felix. Glenn died, and you’re here to make sure he died for nothing. And if Glenn could see you—”  
  
“Stop.” Felix growled. “Stop saying his _name.”__  
__  
_Sylvain’s face tightened; his smile dropped into a sorrowful grimace. “I know you’re in pain.” He touched at his own chest, near his heart, to grab at his vest. “I am, too. This sucks. All of it. All of it, it’s horrible. And what Dimitri did to Mercedes—I’ll admit, I could have covered better but…”  
  
His eyes looked at the ground. He broke all contact with Felix. “I guess, I wanted this to be over, too. You and me. This...this moment.” Sylvain’s eyes found Felix’s again. “I guess I wanted you to know.”  
  
Felix found his breath again. The darkness pressed in, low and tight, and the cool dry night air felt fiery to his skin, just for a moment, and he was there, in the smoke and the roar of the dying, and Glenn, Glenn reaching for him...Glenn, telling him to…but it wasn’t Glenn...  
  
Sylvain’s face peer backed. “Let this be over, Felix.”  
  
Felix closed his eyes. He couldn’t look again. He didn’t want to see, to think. “I’m _trying. _If you just move, Sylvian.” He let his breath go. “Please.”  
  
“You don’t want to do this.”  
  
“Yes.” Felix had opened his eyes to make sure Sylvain could see exactly what was inside of him. How wrong Sylvain was. To believe that he couldn’t kill Dimitri. That he wouldn’t. It was all he had left to do. It wasn’t a question, wasn’t a broken promise. It was fate. He had to do this. “Yes, I do.”  
  
Sylvain’s dark eyes shrunk back. A look of fear, for once, over his ingenuine face. How strange it looked. A lifetime of watching Sylvain perform, connive, until Sylvain had lost his entire sense of self. That was what had separated them for years. Felix knew exactly who he was. And Sylvain, Sylvain had lost himself far too long ago.  
  
Honesty over Sylvain’s face.  
  
How strange it looked.  
  
“And if I begged you not to?” Sylvain asked. His voice, now, so strangely sincere. His dark eyes lifted, a hint of that annoying, playful earnestness still flickering behind them. “You know that isn’t beneath me. I’ve got two good knees. I’ll do it.”  
  
“Stop.” Felix ordered. Sylvain, begging before him in the dark. If Sylvain did that. If the last image he had of his friend’s face was him on the ground before him, unable to defend himself, unable to get back up once his blade went straight through his spine.  
  
If that happened, Felix wouldn't be able to raise his blade.  
  
“Please, Felix, tell me what you want. Tell me how to make this stop.”  
  
“Can you give me my brother back?” Felix asked. The thought finally in the air. He didn’t mean to say it.  
  
Why did he say that?  
  
Sylvain’s face. That expression. Such a silent, pain-filled sadness. “No. I, ah, I can’t do that.”  
  
_“Then move!”_ The scream ripped from Felix’s throat. It seemed to rattle the trees, the door, swirl the air between them. “Get out of my way!”  
  
Sylvain was closer now. Felix hadn’t even realized. Their talking, his eyes, the way he moved, he had tricked him and Sylvain was too close, but there wasn’t time to step back. Felix held his ground, eyes tight to Sylvain’s face. Felix brought up his blade, tight and steady.  
  
Sylvain held out his hands to rest just over the edge of the blade. “I’m not going to fight you.”  
  
A hot breath left Felix’s nose, a dry snort of disdain. The frank, joyless joke of that statement.  
  
“You’ve always been a horrible fighter. You never train. You never even tried. You probably don’t even know what this blade is called, do you? If only I could fight Dimitri, and not _you.”__  
__  
_Sylvain shook his head. A simple response to the rage building inside of Felix’s chest. It was so close now. He was nearly there. Dimitri would be dead. And the pain could be over. It would all be over.  
  
“You’d be killing a man who wouldn’t even know why he’s dying.” Sylvain said softly. To all of Felix’s yelling, Sylvain just became softer. And he hated him, Goddess, how he hated Sylvain’s _softness._ “And you’d be killing Glenn’s last wishes. Don’t you see that?”_  
_  
“Glenn’s last wishes? Where did you get that? From Dimitri?” Felix spat back into Sylvain’s face. “I suppose he’d know. He talks to Glenn all the time, and never, _not once, _remembers me.”  
  
Sylvain’s face looked blurry. Felix blinked, again and again, to straighten out his vision. Warmth on his face. Warmth that moved, that dripped onto the ground between them.  
  
“I remember you.” Sylvain said. “I haven’t forgotten.”  
  
His hands had begun to ache from holding the sword between them.  
  
“You don’t even know who you are, Sylvain.” Felix returned. “How could you remember me?”  
  
“I know enough about you to be here. To wait for you tonight. Because I know that you’d do exactly what you believe to be right. Because that’s who you are.” Sylvain defended. His voice quiet. Then, watery. “I’ve never been able to be like you. I never believed in anything.”  
  
“If you think that, why stop me from killing him? He’s dead already, Sylvain. He’s not there anymore. He’s not…” His grip rattled the blade; it tapped lightly into Sylvain’s open palms, back and forth, back and forth, thin shallow cuts, thin bleeding words. “...he’s not our friend. Not anymore.”  
  
“That’s okay that you think that way, Felix.” Sylvain’s voice replied. Felix felt that was all they had become now, just two voices in the darkness. “I’ll remember for you. I’ll remember us exactly as we’ve always been.” Sylvain’s hands steadied the blade between them. “I don’t mind doing that. We just have to wait.”  
  
Felix’s jaw locked. “You say that—you seriously say that to my face— when he broke Mercedes’ arm?”  
  
Sylvain lowered his head. “It’s sprained.”  
  
“Don’t make light of what it means, Sylvain.” Felix’s words lashed, a vibrant whip to take Sylvain to his knees. “Not that you’d have an ounce of sincerity to consider someone else’s pain in your entire life! Goddess forgive me, Sylvain,_ get out of my way.”_  
  
A wetness met Felix’s hand.  
  
He looked down. The droplets glistened in the moonlight, and his heart stopped, for he had prepared to see red, but…  
  
Sylvain, with his face bowed over its edge, palms washed in blood, slick and wet, holding the blade back between his hands. But the wetness that had fallen over Felix’s skin. The dampness there. Somehow warmer, somehow, smaller.  
  
Sylvain. Sylvain, crying.  
  
How strange it seemed. How that hollow place inside of Felix’s chest echoed, ringing like a bell that had chimed before, soft and vibrant. A feeling of forgiveness. _  
_  
In the dull light, the teeth of the blade digging into the palms of his hands, holding tighter and tighter, the final defense, the only defense. Sylvain wasn’t afraid to bleed for this.  
  
“Do you remember, Felix?” Sylvain’s voice trembled in the silence. “That promise we made when we were kids. You said we’d die together. And I’m still willing to make good on that promise, Felix.” He swallowed, the sound wet, and went on, having decided to finally lay the answer between them. "And, maybe after our fight, if by some miracle, I live, just a little bit longer than you, I'll make sure no one knows what you tried to do. So whoever opens that door and finds us, they won't be able to tell whose blood is whose, and even with _my last breath,_ I'll be covering for your mistakes, Felix, and the final one that you're about to make."  
  
Felix closed his eyes. The sword, unable to bend, unable to move. He couldn’t speak.  
  
“Felix.” Sylvain’s voice. The only voice left. “We have to let go. Please. Just let go.”  
  
The blade. The sound of it hitting the dirt.  
  
The sound of rain without the storm.

* * *

  
“'...And so, the Knight looked to her face, so far above and away from him, and he knew that it was due to their parting, that she was to be a light above, a light inside, and a light to see through his many years to come. The Knight moved to collected his sword as well as his shield to bring back to his lord father…’”  
  
Mercedes paused. She felt eyes to her face.   
  
There was a strange unshakable feeling in the human discomfort of being watched, not that she felt she had been looked at often, but still, the feeling creeped along her face, delicate as a blush.  
  
She lowered the book that she had rested against the edge of her sling to ease off the dull ache of holding the book for as long as she read. She really only wanted to read a few pages, but alas, the story was an old favourite, and it wasn’t particularly eventful to sit at a bedside with so little do. She rested it down into her lap and peer over Dimitri’s bedside.  
  
She did not expect to see a blue eye staring back up at her.  
  
She was equally grateful it was just his one good eye; she was trying her best, but still, his missing eye frightened her terribly. It was at the urging of her quiet, selfish woes towards Bernadetta that a new eye-patch be sewn so that it would not move so easily along Dimitri’s face. It allowed Mercedes to care for him without a sudden, heart-stopping panic to overtake her. It was more than reassuring that she not peek and see that hollow place along his face, that he may rest his head against the pillow, or move roughly in his sleep, and it still remain fixed in place.   
  
However, true to her sweet nature, Bernadetta had embedded her stitching with cute yellow lines of tiny intricate waves, the way the ocean appeared to turn golden at sunset, and resting along the bottom of the blackened weaving, the tiny face of a lion.  
  
Sylvain had lightly teased that it was a little _too_ cutesy, but, ultimately, no one fought that hard to have Bernadetta amend her design. And, it was with this patch that Mercedes spied Dimitri blinking up at her like he had been awakened from too long of a nap.  
  
And, softly, slowly, the morning revealing him to be endearingly dazed, Mercedes wondered if this was...well, she couldn’t call him, ‘her’ Dimitri, could she? That would be...quite selfish. Still, she celebrated that his eyes had finally, finally opened. She couldn’t help but smile at him. He was really quite sweet and he had fought bravely through the waves of his fever, his delusions and shivering hallucations. And he had been so ill—she could not count the times she had worried his fever would burn him alive. But with the way he was looking at her now...  
  
She tilted her head, curious. Had his fever broken?  
  
“Your Grace?” Mercedes asked him quietly. “Do you need water?”  
  
His lips moved soundlessly before he found the words, but, ever so gingerly, she heard them.  
  
“Could you...finish the page…” Dimitri whispered faintly.  
  
“Oh,” Mercedes smiled softly. “Which part? Where I left off?”  
  
“Yes,” came his tired whisper. “...He’s thinking about home before...battle. Before he dies. That’s...the best part.”  
  
Mercedes felt her heart give a tender tug. “I had forgotten how sad this story was. It has been many years since I’ve read it.”  
  
“...I’m afraid I’m...partial...to them, Mercedes…”  
  
She lifted her head. She glanced back over him. “...You...you remember me, Your Grace?”  
  
He weakly lifted a light brow but it quickly fell. An exhausted expression of misunderstanding. It was awfully sweet. “...Had I forgotten you?”  
  
She held back. “Perhaps for a while, Your Grace. But I’m so happy you’re here now.”  
  
He closed his eye again. “I see.” Another breath helped him speak. “Have you been here long?”

“I’m here to visit for a moment, Your Grace, but it hasn’t been too long. I have garden duties next but I wished to be clean near a bedside, compared to visiting you later in the day.” Mercedes told him politely. Her arm, in its sling, had fallen to touch at the crumpled sheets nearest the bedside edge, but it hardly hurt her now.  
  
Dimitri’s eye twitched open again. He moved, his large hand careful, to touch faintly at her sling. He had awoken to her voice, and he knew her voice well, but his eye felt strained, hardly able to focus, and he wondered in small fear that perhaps she was just a hallucination. He had to make sure she was real, and, if at all certain, her arm...if it was truly hurt. “Does that...hurt?”  
  
“No, Your Grace. It has been a few days now. It is really just precaution.” Mercedes explained carefully. “You have been sick for a week, perhaps a little longer, by now.”  
  
Her arm felt warm and real. Another moment not spent feeling so lost, so confused, as if underwater. He was so grateful. His eye closed once more in relief.  
  
“A week,” Dimitri answered back in mild consideration. “No wonder I feel so terrible.”  
  
Mercedes blinked at him mindfully. “Do you need anything, Your Grace?”  
  
“Hah,” a soft laugh quickly turned into a rough cough, but when he settled, he opened his eye again to look at her meaningfully. “Dimitri...please, Mercedes. I don’t wish to be formal with you.”  
  
She made a small sound in her chest and Dimitri wasn’t so sure why it sounded familiar. But he rather liked it. He rather like much of everything about her. He felt quite lucky that it was her that he had awoken to.  
  
“Certainly, Dimitri. If that is what you wish.”  
  
“And...may I ask one more selfish thing?”  
  
“Yes?” Mercedes answered him in that sweet voice of hers. “I will do my best to get you anything you'd like.”  
  
He settled back onto the pillows. Mercedes was thankful to see him like this. No longer in pain, no longer dirty. He looked peaceful. It felt so natural. He chuckled weakly again, a nervous sound, but his pale eye looked back towards the book she had placed into her lap.  
  
“May I hear the rest?” He blinked heavily again up at her again, the movement fatigued, struggling to open once more. Clearly, the energy he used to talk was already dissolved away from him. But he smiled and it caught Mercedes off guard. She had seen that smile before, small over the corners of his lips. “I’m sorry...I doubt if I’ll be able to stay awake till the ending...but I wish to try.”  
  
Mercedes smiled. She looked so pretty in the morning’s glow. He found himself staring rudely at her. He found himself flushing. He dropped his sight at once, to close his eye, to hide.  
  
“We have time, Dimitri, you don’t have to push yourself. I could come back tomorrow, too.”  
  
“...Tomorrow, too, then.” Dimitri repeated her tiredly. “I’d like that.”  
  
Mercedes adjusted the book once more, allowing herself a glance back at him. She felt such a warm, delighted feeling open inside of her lungs to see his expression so unguarded just to be close to her, sleepy and soft. She hoped she could give him a sense of comfort. Someone to share with, to whisper with, to hold onto. Dimitri was not done with this fight for his humanity, not yet, but Mercedes could see it. The seeds of growth, of change. A kind soul, returning back to life, golden in the morning light.  
  
Tomorrow, then. She smiled to herself. Time. She always knew they’d have enough, for today, tomorrow, the day after…Time after the war, once it would be through.  
  
Time. Enough for everyone.

* * *

fanwork @KherohiArt   
  


* * *

  
  
**AN:   
  
**

sweet fandom, t h a n k, just t h a n k you

seriously, this fic was so well-received, and I am so very flattered. Please keep an eye out for more of my Fire Emblem: Three Houses work in the future, as I have more one-shots and character explorations prepared (like a sexy Dimitri/Mercedes tale, as well as Sylvain/Dorothea, perhaps Ingrid/Ashe??? it is so hard to sexualize my sweet bean Ashe, by god, why must i be this way, devil tango take me awayy), as well as more Annette/Felix because I am straight up trash for those two

THIS FIC NOW HAS FAN ART? AM I ALIVE MORE?? MERCEDES WORKIN' THAT SLING!! THANK YOU SO MUCH TO Kherohi (@KherohiArt), please go check out their work!!!

Ps. if you need more grieving Felix/Annette/Dimitri/Sylvain in your life, check out my other piece for FE3H: “["this is the wrong night (tell me good night and let it go)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20490137)” for that extra sad in your day, OR, if you'd like to explore some of Sylvain's angst (and have hot sad sauciness from Dorothea) (plus from Caspar/Linhardt canonical sweetness checkout: "["What Was So Easy In The Moonlight (By The Morning Never Is](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20584790))". I won't lie, that one is basically a Christmas fic in September, smh 


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